Civil servants were upset at being required to draft inaccurate Government press releases saying it had

Civil servants were upset at being required to draft inaccurate Government press releases saying it had been cleared by the Scott arms-to-Iraq report, MPs were told yesterday. This was opposed by Dublin, which feared it would become a delaying tactic for the Ulster Unionists to keep talking.. But some Tory MPs are warning they will vote against the Government on the legislation to set up the elections, if the Unionists remain opposed.The British compromise is intended to meet the Ulster Unionists’ demands for the elections to be based on the18 constituencies in Ulster, electing about 90 members to a forum, from which the negotiating teams will be appointed.Whitehall also accepted the Unionists’ demands for the forum to run alongside the negotiating teams. “The Government will hit a brick wall with this compromise,” said William Ross, the Ulster Unionist MP for Londonderry East.

“They have tried to offer something to everyone and failed to win over anyone.”In spite of the opposition, ministers believe the main parties will not boycott the elections. Labour’s Northern Ireland spokeswoman, Mo Mowlam, proposed the hybrid system in the Independent on Sunday, and the Government is likely to count on Labour support. There were strong hints at Westminster that the Irish government had gone cold on the idea of the referendum because it would duplicate the elections.John Major said the election plan would require the broad support of all the parties, but hints of the likely compromise had succeeded in uniting the parties against it.Leaders of the Ulster Unionists will put the election plan to a meeting of the 600-strong Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast on Saturday, but senior members of the party in Westminster said last night that the compromise was unacceptable and warned they could help to bring down the Government. The Government was pressing ahead with its compromise plan in the hope that the hostility will fade, and that IRA will be persuaded by Sinn Fein to restore the ceasefire. The plan is to be put to the Cabinet for approval today and a statement is expected in the Commons.
Underlining the trouble the Government is facing, Whitehall sources said last night the statement could be followed by a more-detailed note on the form the elections will take, and consultations will continue on the groundwork paper issued last week, which made it clear that if no progress is made on decommissioning of weapons by the IRA, this would not be allowed to hold up debate on other issues.Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Minister, last night raised nationalist concerns about the British compromise in a meeting in Belfast with Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.It also emerged last night that there was backtracking by Dublin on the idea of a peace referendum on both sides of the border at the same time as the elections to the forum. Three-year siege begins.18 Feb 1994: First marketplace massacre: 68 killed by a mortar fired from outside the city.29 Aug 1995: Second marketplace massacre.

37 die in the same marketplace, victims of another shell.Dec 1995: War endsMar 1996: City reunited as the transfer of Serb suburbs to Muslim/Croat control completed.Research: Anna Daviesand Ben Summers. The Ulster Unionists last night warned the Government it would run into a “brick wall” of hostility with its attempts to reach a compromise on elections to bring all the parties to the negotiating table by the deadline of 10 June. The following day, Serb-dominated Yugoslav National Army units began to shell Sarajevo. It had escaped two World Wars relatively unscathed.1946: Sarajevo University established.1984: Winter OlympicsFeb/Mar 1992: Yugoslavia breaks up after a Serb-boycotted referendum in which Muslims and Croats vote for independence.5 April 1992: Bosnia’s parliament declares independence The city gets its first taste of battle for 300 years Mass peace demonstration fired upon by snipers Scores of civilians killed or wounded. National independence becomes hotly debated.1908: The Austro-Hungarian Empire formally annexes Bosnia and Herzegovina.June 1914: Gavrilo Princip assassinates Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand I, triggering First World War.November 1918: Diet of Sarajevo proclaims union within Yugoslavia.1945: Sarajevo becomes capital of Bosnia, one of six republics in the Communist Yugoslav Federation. After 1991, the centre became a government stronghold under siege from Serb suburbs.History of a cityAD9: Romans establish rest centre at Ilidza close to what is now Sarajevo.1415: First mention of Sarajevo as Vrh Bosna, a Slav castle.1428: Vrh Bosna falls to the Turks, an invasion that turns city into a trading centre and stronghold of Muslim culture, making it one of largest, richest and most beautiful cities of the Turkish-ruled Balkans.1451-1553: Sarajevo ruled by native Slavs who have converted to Islam.1550: Jews fleeing from Spain begin to settle in the city.16th and 17th centuries: A period of prosperity is followed by a series of floods, fires and plagues that savage Sarajevo’s population.1850: Sarajevo becomes the administrative centre of the declining Ottoman Empire.1875: After more than 400 years of occupation, Turks are ousted from Sarajevo by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.1878: The Treaty of Berlin assigns Bosnia to Austria Building boom starts City becomes known for its intelligentsia.

In western European eyes, the separation of nationalities is not a noble ideal, but in eastern eyes it can have the virtue of offering a respite from lengthy wars.Bosnia under the Dayton agreementCapital: Sarajevo: name derived from Saraj Ovasi, literally “palace in the fields” The city’s population is around 470,000 Pre-1991, a mixture of Serb, Croat and mainly Muslim. The harsh truth is that such conditions do not obtain in much of the region.Indeed, in some areas the prospects for inter-ethnic violence are rather greater than those for the consolidation of democracy. They are likely to remain so as long as strident nationalism remains the stock in trade of leading political parties.In such circumstances, if war does break out on the scale seen in Bosnia, it may be necessary to accept as a hard reality the forced transfers of population provoked by the fighting. As long as basic standards of democracy and respect for minority rights are inadequate in Kosovo, the Albanian problem will remain a timebomb.Although Greek-Turkish relations are rarely free of tension, it is sometimes forgotten that the two countries have not gone to war for more than 70 years.

The human cost has been terrible, but sometimes the long-term effect has been beneficial.Ideally, ethnic minorities in turbulent parts of Europe such as the Balkans would enjoy complete security in political systems framed by tolerance and respect for the law. One reason is that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne provided for the compulsory exchange of Turkish Muslims and Greek Christians between Greece and Turkey, greatly simplifying the ethnic make-up of the two states.Population transfers in the twentieth century have generally been either an accompaniment to war, as in Bosnia, or a feature of subsequent peace arrangements, as after 1945 in central and eastern Europe. The great majority have ended up not in Albania but in the United States and Germany.The southern Balkans might be more stable with an Albanian state that included most ethnic Albanians, rather than large numbers being spread over at least three different countries. It is not hard to imagine the tensions boiling over.This could result in the forced expulsion or flight of most Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia into Albania. Large-scale population movements have already started in Kosovo: about 250,000 of the province’s 1.7 million Albanians have left since 1990. The prospect of entry into the European Union and Nato provides Hungary, Romania and Slovakia with an incentive to avoid violence and reach a compromise.