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World Envoys Sorry for Anti-Muslim Riots in Bosnia
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina, June 19 (News Agencies) - International officials in Bosnia expressed on Tuesday their regrets for anti-Muslim rioting that marred a ceremony marking the reconstruction of a mosque in a mainly Serbian city. But, they saw hope in the fact that the event took place at all.
Bosnia's top international mediator, Wolfgang Petritsch, "regrets the fact that the ceremony to lay the cornerstone of the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka was marred by a few hundred violent demonstrators," Sonja Pastuovic, a spokeswoman for Petritsch's office, said.
However, Petritsch "acknowledges that the local authorities fulfilled their obligations, ensuring that public order was upheld, providing a safe environment for the participants, and giving priority to the principle of human rights," she added.
A spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the pan-European body was satisfied that the ceremony, successful due to good planning and security measures, took place.
Police used tear gas and water cannons Monday against more than 1,000 Serbian hardliners who tried, but failed, to disrupt the ceremony in the Bosnian-Serb capital.
Twenty policemen were injured, one of them seriously, while 97 protestors were detained, a spokesman for the Bosnian-Serb interior ministry, Zoran Glusac, said.
On Tuesday, roughly a dozen policemen were still securing the site where the foundation stone was laid.
NATO-led peacekeepers closely monitored the situation and were ready to provide support to local police, a spokesman for the peacekeepers told journalists.
"At no time during the ceremony did Stabilization Force (SFOR) feel it was necessary to assist the police who conducted themselves in a very professional and capable manner," spokesman Hubert Genest said.
The Ferhadija mosque was dynamited during the 1992-95 war, when widespread violence by the Serbs forced Muslims and Croats from the ethnically mixed city.
Serb rioters had forced the cancellation of an initial attempt to lay the foundation stone for the building last month, in violence which left one Muslim dead and over 30 injured.
The Bosnian Serb authorities urged their citizens to show tolerance over the rebuilding of the mosque, warning that renewed anti-Muslim riots would have grave consequences for democracy in the Serb-run part of Bosnia.
Banja Luka, the capital of the Bosnian-Serb entity, was the center of the massive ethnic cleansing of minority Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Efforts to rebuild the historic mosque are part of an initiative to allow the return of thousands of Muslim refugees to the area.
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