Six years after Bosnia's 1992-95 war ended some 70 percent of Croats and Muslims are still waiting to repossess property in the Bosnian Serb entity which they had been forced to abandon during the war, a local official said Wednesday.
The rate of successful house return to their pre-war owners is at 30 percent while that of flats stands at 29 percent, Bosnian Serb Minister of Refugees Mico Micic told a press conference.
"We are not completely satisfied with this rate," he said adding that this year there had been certain progress on previus year, without giving precise figures.
Out of a total of 109,283 requests to repossess houses, in 32,469 cases property was returned to its owner, Micic's assistant Drago Vuleta said adding that out of 30,450 requests for the return of flats 8,795 of them were approved.
However, these figures also included a number of cases in which property was devastated during the war, Vuleta added.
Post-war Bosnia is divided into two entities -- the Serb-run Republika Srpska (RS) and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) there are still some 518,00 Bosnian refugees displaced internally while another 263,500 of them live in third countries -- BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP)
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