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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (12315)	3/6/2002 4:32:16 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 23908

The widespread corruption is viewed by many here as a severe blow in the long, frustrating struggle to build a democratic Bosnia, a country that has received $5.1 billion in international aid since the end of the war in 1995. The corruption has also played a pivotal role in driving away foreign investment, seen as the only way to free Bosnia from dependence on foreign assistance. The missing funds were supposed to have been used to rebuild Bosnia's roads, buildings and schools, as well as to provide municipal services in towns throughout Bosnia. Alija Izetbegovic, the Bosnian President, along with other senior nationalist leaders, has dismissed the allegations of official corruption made by the international investigators. While conceding that corruption takes place, the President disputes the scale of the charges, denying that as much as a billion dollars has been misappropriated as stated in the long and detailed report. Izetbegovic has repeatedly denied these charges, most recently in a local press interview. "It would be nonsense to claim that there is no corruption, or that it is irrelevant, in a country that has just come out of the war," he said, adding that Bosnia is a country "which does not have established borders, where joint institutions are still not functioning, and which has at least two armies and two police forces." The Dayton agreement, which was signed by Muslim, Croatian and Serbian warring factions in 1995, called for the creation of a single state and the return of two million refugees and displaced people to their homes. But Bosnia remains partitioned into three antagonistic ethnic enclaves. Serb-held Bosnia continues to operate as a separate entity. The internationally created Muslim-Croat Federation has no authority and has been unable to raise revenues. The two million refugees and displaced people have not gone back to their homes. And the Office of the High Representative has been reduced to promising money and aid projects to towns and cities that say they will allow some refugees to return, promises that are usually never kept. freerepublic.com "Dayton stopped the violence, but it did not end the war," said Jacques P. Klein, the chief United Nations representative here, "and the war is still being fought bureaucratically through obfuscation, delay and avoidance by a group of leaders who do not want to lose power. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a patient on life support assistance -- political, military and economic."