Bomb blasts Bosnian party offices

VITEZ, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- A bomb has destroyed an office of Bosnia's ruling Social Democratic Party.

The device exploded in Vitez, a town dominated by Bosnian Croat hard-liners who oppose the country's new pro-Western government.

The United Nations' international police force arrived on scene to help the local police with their investigation.

The U.N. spokesman in Sarajevo, Douglas Coffman, said: "The U.N. Mission condemns this act of terrorism, carried out against a leading party in Bosnia's first non-nationalist government."

Vitez, about 35 kilometres (20 miles) west of Sarajevo, is a stronghold of the hard-line Croat Democratic Union, or HDZ.

The party lost November's elections in the Bosnian-Croat federation to a multiethnic, pro-Western coalition led by the Social Democrats.

The 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended the Bosnian war divided the country into two mini states, a Serb republic and a Bosnian-Croat federation.

Refusing to recognise the election defeat, the HDZ pulled its members out of government institutions and proclaimed the new coalition illegal.

For the past two months, the HDZ has led a drive to declare self-rule in areas where they still dominate -- a move that would violate the constitution and the Dayton peace accord.

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The Dayton Peace Agreement
A Brief History of War in Bosnia-Herzegovina
Government of the Republic of Croatia

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