Bosnians voted on the second day of municipal elections yesterday, and international mediators said the poll had been a success despite efforts by hard-line nationalists to sabotage it. The local elections, the first in seven years and seen as vital to keeping the troubled peace process alive, are bitterly contested because refugee votes threaten to overturn the results of "ethnic cleansing" and military conquest.
The result of the vote, in which thousands of refugees fearful of returning to their home districts could cast absentee ballots, may not be known for a week.
With only hours to go, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said turnout had been very high despite the efforts of hard-line nationalists to undermine it.
OSCE spokesman Mr David Foley told a news conference: "Nationalists beyond democratic forces, the war criminals, they all resisted this process. But the voice of the people will be heard.
"To those who say there is no progress in Bosnia, today the people have given their answer - they say think again," the spokesman said.
His reference to war criminals appeared to point to Bosnian Serb war-time leader Dr Radovan Karadzic, who is engaged in a bitter power struggle with the pragmatic western-backed Bosnian Serb president, Ms Biljana Plavsic.
Diplomats earlier accused Croat nationalist authorities in the western town of Drvar of trying to stall voting in an attempt to avoid defeat by Serb refugees, who once controlled the town and came back to cast their ballots.
Hundreds of Serb voters spent the night in buses and cars outside the town because Croat authorities running polling stations had adopted a "go-slow" approach.
As Canadian peacekeeping troops provided food and water to the Serbs, election organisers opened a new polling station and prepared an emergency one, manned only by OSCE staff, in case the problems continued.
Opposition parties and independent Sarajevo media called the vote a "farce" which would reinforce the rule of Muslim, Serb and Croat nationalists, who control the media and police.
They accused the West of cutting deals on the eve of the election with nationalist parties which threatened to boycott the vote.
A newspaper commentary in the Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje criticised western envoys for allowing neighbouring Yugoslavia and Croatia - through Serb and Croat proxies - to dictate terms. Boycott threats were "classic blackmail from Belgrade and Zagreb which the West generally accepts", it said.