The international deputy high representative in Bosnia, Hans Schumacher, on Saturday threatened to remove the Bosnian Serb Information Minister if she continued to ban a live TV relay of the first session of the new Bosnian Serb parliament.

Disputes over the TV relay have so far prevented the parliament from adopting an agenda for the day's proceedings.

Schumacher took the floor with an appeal to deputies to sort out the problem and allow President Biljana Plavsic to address the session.

He told the MPs he found the information minister's decision to ban a live TV relay of the session "utterly strange and incomprehensible.

How can the minister of the caretaker government take a decision on behalf of 83 deputies without informing you? This is a strange expression of democratic maturity." Furthermore, he said, the high representative's office had provided considerable sums of money to enable the TV studio at Banja Luka to broadcast nationwide following the closure of the studio at Pale.

"I do hold this minister personally responsible for removing the technical obstacles so that Serb Radio-TV Banja Luka studio can immediately plug in.

They only need one and a half to two hours to do that," Schumacher said.

"If this is not the case, I will remove this minister from office," he said to boos from the floor.

His intervention was broadcast by Bosnian Serb radio, which is carrying a live relay of the session.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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