THE HEAD of the European Union mission in Mostar will recommend extending its mandate after local elections brought rival nationalists to power in the divided city, a spokesman said yesterday.
He said the EU administrator, Mr Ricardo Perez Casado, wanted the mandate extended beyond the July 23rd expiry date after the EU sponsored elections.
Antagonistic Muslim and Croat parties split the vote in Sunday's elections, the first in Bosnia since hostilities ended in 1995 and a trial run for countrywide balloting scheduled for September.
Citizens voted for a single city council under an EU plan to reunify Mostar. But the result raised the spectre of a stalemate that will cement partition, the goal of separatist Croats ruling the city's western half.
Analysts said that may have influenced a decision by Mr Casado to ask EU governments to extend the two year old mandate.
"Mr Casado will recommend to the EU an extension of the mandate. . . The goal [will be] helping solve economic problems, reconstruction of the city, and return of refugees [to suitable] accommodation," said the EU spokesman, Mr Dragan Gasic.
A European Commission source said Mr Casado won unofficial backing from Brussels on Monday for such an idea.
"It is not quite clear yet what would be the legal basis for a new EU mandate in Mostar once the city assembly is set up and the new mayor elected," said the source.
EU ministers are expected to consider the suggestion later this month.
One of the main EU agendas, Mr Gasic said, would be trying to bring back thousands of refugees expelled from their homes on both sides of the line during the 1993-94 Croat Muslim war.
Nationalist forces who carved out separatist entities in Bosnia during the war have blocked refugees from returning home where they would now be in a minority, a major violation of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty.
Mr Casado met the mayors of east and west Mostar yesterday to congratulate them on the peaceful, orderly conduct of the elections and expressed the hope that new Joint institutions would be formed soon.
The joint 37 member municipal assembly is supposed to hold its first session and elect a mayor two weeks after final official results are announced by the electoral commission, expected today or tomorrow.
According to unofficial returns issued on Monday, the SDA party of Bosnia's Muslim led central government led the opposing Bosnian Croat HDZ by a 3 per cent margin.
Mr Gasic said the pro-unification SDA will, according to unofficial projections, obtain a 19-18 or 20-17 edge in seats.
But even in the latter case, he said, the SDA will be in no position to decide on key issues, including the city's budget, without the consent of the HDZ.
"The estimate is that there will be no classical majority opposition relationship. It would not be politically feasible in a town where the electorate is physically divided along ethnic lines," Mr Gasic said.
The united city assembly and its executive body would be in charge of Mostar's budget, economy, infrastructure, airport and railway station. District councils would have jurisdiction over schooling, culture, sport and religious activities.
Meanwhile, in the Bosnian Serb capital of Pale, the "vice president", Ms Biljana Plavsic, said yesterday she would not use her new executive powers to hand over Dr Radovan Karadzic to the UN war crimes tribunal.
"By our law it is forbidden for a person on the territory of Republika Srpska to be handed over to a foreign court. If you deviate from the law you have chaos. We don't want that," Ms Plavsic told reporters.