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Bosnia: Serb Parties Win Election In Brcko

Sarajevo, 10 October 1997 (RFE/RL) - Bosnian Serb parties have won a majority of seats on the council of the strategic north Bosnian town of Brcko,

Municipal elections poll supervisors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said today that three Serb parties won a total of 30 seats, beating ethnic Muslim and Croat-backed parties, who won 26 seats. Bosnians voted September 13 and 14 in country-wide municipal elections.

Brcko is strategic for the Serbs because it is key to control of a corridor uniting the eastern and western parts of Bosnia's Serb Republic. Croats and Muslims comprised a majority of the town's population before it fell to Serb forces in 1992.

It's the only part of Bosnia not designated to the Serb half of Bosnia nor to the other Bosnian entity, the Muslim-Croat Federation. An arbitration panel set up as part of the Dayton peace accords has postponed until next March a decision on which entity should control the town.