Vienna, FoNet - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Yugoslavia are close to an agreement on arms reduction that has been the subject of negotiations for the past six months, says an official close to the negotiators. Reuters reports that the negotiations on arms reduction, held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, are supposed to stipulate quotas, that means, numbers of tanks, combat aircraft, and heavy artillery units for each of the Balkan countries, as well as all sides in the Bosnian war. "The chairman says we will have an agreement till June 6th", the official said and added: "It looks fairly good."
Yugoslavia, the Bosnian goverment, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serbs have their representatives at the arms reduction talks. As stated, the agreement document will most probably first be presented in Vienna, and then signed formally by all foreign affairs and defense ministers on June 11th, in Oslo.
One diplomat stated that it seems that the last obstacle has a more political nature than it is an obstacle to the arms reduction agreement itself, and it has to do with the treatment of the Bosnian Serb entity in the offical document. The Dayton accord named this entity the Republic of Srpska but the Bosnian Muslims are against the use of this name because they want the Serb entity to be considered a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.