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Maps emerge as peace

plan sticking point

SARAJEVO: Maps dividing Bosnia seem the major sticking point in a U.S. peace initiative, based on comments by a senior separatist Serb leader and a 12-point peace programme issued by Bosnia's Moslem president.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said in his programme, which was read on government radio and television on Friday evening, that the 1994 "Contact Group' maps would have to be the basis for any settlement.

"We accepted from the beginning slight modifications in the plan and we still do, considering that the Contact Group map of the internal borders couldn't be worse for us than it is now," the text of Izetbegovic's programme said.

Five major powers known as the Contact Group drafted a peace plan with maps in 1994, proposing a 51:49 territorial split between the Bosnian government and separatist Serbs.

The government accepted the plan reluctantly, saying the Contact Group maps were the minimum it would accept.

The maps included three eastern Moslem enclaves surrounded by Serb-controlled territory but connected to Sarajevo by a thin corridor and a fourth enclave in the northwest cut off from the rest of Bosnia.

Two of the three eastern enclaves have since fallen to separatist Serb forces and the U.S. plan initially floated the possibility of trading the third -- Gorazde -- for land around Sarajevo, an option the government promptly rejected.

But Momcilo Krajisnik, hardline speaker of the separatist Serb assembly, on Friday rejected the notion of government enclaves inside "Serb' territory.

Saying mediators now had a better understanding of the interests of the Bosnian Serb side in the war, he added: "This especially relates to our wish for compact territory.

Izetbegovic also rejected the notion that the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo would come under U.N. administration -- a feature of the Contact Group plan which side-steps the solution of the country's most difficult territorial problem.

European Union administration of the Bosnian city of Mostar has left it effectively partitioned between Moslems and Croats.-Reuter