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Asked about the current contribution of religious communities to stability, Bird said the OHR had established close ties with Bosnia's Inter-Religious Council, which was founded in 1997 by Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox and Roman Catholic leaders.

Among recent positive moves, he said authorities in Banja Luka had issued a permit for rebuilding the historic Ferhadija mosque, one of 17 destroyed in the north-western city during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

He added that the heads of Bosnia's Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, Archbishop Nikolai Mrdja and Cardinal Vinko Puljic, had attended the reopening of another mosque last October in Bosnia's Serb-controlled Republika Srpska.

"All the religious groups contain hard-liners who've been extremely critical of our Council and the role of the international community," the 33-year-old spokesman said. "But a broad church position also exists in each community, and there are extremely co-operative people too. It would be quite wrong to attempt a league table apportioning merits and faults."

Mostly Sunni Muslims made up 44 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina's population of 4.3 million before the war, with Orthodox Christians comprising 35 percent and Roman Catholics 18 percent. About 270,000 people died in the Bosnian war.

Although interfaith relations have been tense throughout the Balkans since Yugoslavia's break-up in 1990-91 over rival identifications with Croatian, Serb and Bosnian interests, inter-religious committees are now also operating in Croatia and Kosovo.

Among recent events, Muslim, Orthodox and Roman Catholics said they planned a joint peace appeal in Macedonia, while Roman Catholic leaders agreed at a mid-March meeting in Vienna with representatives of the European Union's Stability Pact for South-eastern Europe that all future "initiatives for peace and development" should be ecumenical and inter-faith.

However, Roman Catholic and Orthodox leaders have complained about the slow return of an estimated 1.4 million refugees to Bosnia, as well as about alleged attempts to "Islamize" the country.

In an interview with Italy's Famiglia Cristiana Roman Catholic weekly last November, Cardinal Puljic said 49 mosques were being built in the Sarajevo area, out of 156 nationwide. Meanwhile, a senior Catholic official in the Sarajevo archdiocese said that pork could only be bought secretly at certain shops in the city and that efforts were continuing to convince Muslims that alcohol should be forbidden.

In an open letter in February, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Banja Luka, Franjo Komarica, said that only 1,300 ethnic Croats had returned to his region since the November 1995 Dayton accord, out of 70,000 who fled during the 1992-95 war.

But Chris Bird told ENI that the return of refugees and displaced people would be assisted by Bosnia's "clear and strict new property laws," adding that Wolfgang Petritsch had "sent a clear signal" by sacking 39 officials for attempting to impede the new laws.

"A total of 67,000 returned last year to areas where they are in the minority, including Croats to Republika Srpska and Serbs to Herzegovina—almost double the figure for 1999," Bird said. "The talk now is no longer about obstructive officials, but about finding money and resources. Although we are only at the start of the process, the logjam has now been broken."

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April (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45