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by Amra Hadziosmanovic SARAJEVO (AFP) - After its first eight years of independence, Bosnia, for the first time, is sending a genuine multi-ethnic team to the Olympics, a move seen as a great step forward in the process of reunification of the war-torn country.
The nine-strong team includes four athletes from the Bosnian Serb-run half of Bosnia, the Republika Srpska (RS). Under International Olympic Committee (IOC) auspices, the representatives of Bosnia's three ethnic communities - Muslim, Croat and Serb - agreed last year to form a common squad for the Sydney Olympics. At the Office of the High Representative (OHR), Wolfgang Petritsch, in charge of implementation of Bosnia's 1995 peace agreement, sees the move as "a great step forward." "Sport anyway, and this event in particular, should be above politics," spokesperson Oleg Milisic said. "Sport is something that creates a state, and we hope that this will echo through all areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina's society." Almost five years after the war, Bosnia, divided along ethnic lines, is still struggling to get its institutions working efficiently and to put its war-torn economy on the road to recovery. The Olympic team will participate in the Games under a joint flag and with a wordless anthem, both of which have been imposed by the OHR as the parliament has, as yet, failed to agree on any state symbol. It was only this year that Muslims and Croats formed a joint soccer league, while Bosnian Serbs have their own. They could not agree on a play-off, which would have given Serb teams a chance to participate in European club competitions. Basketball play-offs that would include teams from both of Bosnia's entities - the Republika Srpska (RS) and the Muslim-Croat Federation - was introduced last year. However, athletes from the RS do not participate in Bosnian collective sport teams, there is no joint sport association, and those associations recognized by international sport associations, are mainly Muslim sport associations. Bosnia participated in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics after emergency recognition of its status by the IOC. Bosnia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia only a couple of months earlier, triggering a brutal three-year war as Bosnian Serbs desired to remain as a part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. As in 1992, in 1996 in Atlanta, a few Serb and Croat athletes participated on the team, but they all came exclusively from Muslim-controlled areas. Sarajevo, then a part of a non-fractionalized Yugoslavia, had hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. But almost all of the sport facilities built for those Games were destroyed in the war. Damages from that war to athletic facilities in the city are estimated at $100 million, Seidalija Mustafa, Secretary General of the Bosnian Olympic Committee said. The committee is currently looking for foreign investors who would finance reconstruction of the facilities. "We are also preparing to put our candidacy for hosting [the] 2010 Winter Olympics. The official announcement will be made by the end of the year," said Mustafa. |
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