Agence France-Presse
22 May 2007
SARAJEVO, May 22 (AFP) -- Queen Noor of Jordan on Tuesday urged
greater commitment in the search for thousands of people missing
since Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
At a meeting with Bosnian Prime Minister Nikola Spiric in the town
of Mostar, Queen Noor, a commissioner of the International Commission
on Missing Persons (ICMP), expressed her disappointment over the lack
of progress in making a Missing Persons Institute (MPI) functional,
the ICMP said in a statement.
"Today, almost two years after the signing of the agreement...and
despite the fact that the Directors of MPI have been appointed and
the budget approved, the Institute is still not fully functional",
the statement quoted Queen Noor as saying.
Bosnian authorities agreed with the ICMP nearly two years ago to merge missing persons' commissions of the country's two ethically divided parts into one body, the MPI.
However, they have since failed to agree on the appointment of
generally acceptable candidates to the management bodies of the MPI, which is hoped to speed up exhumation and identification of the missing as well as to de-politicize the search for the mass graves.
Spiric pledged to "undertake all necessary measures to resolve this issue as soon as possible."
Bosnia's 1992-1995 war split the country into two highly autonomous entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, handing each entity its own government, parliament and police.
There are still more than 13,000 people missing from the Bosnian war which claimed some 200,000 lives.
The Bosnia-based ICMP was set up in 1996 with the aim of assisting
tens of thousands of families hoping to find out what happened to their relatives who disappeared during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.