Delighted to be here today. The start of a new career for me as a postman. A somewhat unusual start - not everyday that a postman gets to deliver a million letters on his first day.

Today another exciting and positive day in an exciting and positive week.

First time since the war that postal exchange has resumed. Over a million letters here which have been piling up in Sarajevo for the last two years.

Being able to receive and send letters is one of those humdrum aspects of normal life which most of us take for granted. Letters mean contact and communication. Despite the advent of electronic communication, they are for most people, including technological dinosaurs like me, the main means of communication.

I am delighted that within weeks of the arrival of the new government in the RS, we have been able to clear away the obstacles and get the mail moving again. Over a million letters theoretically means at least one for every inhabitant of the RS. Who knows, Minister Pavic, there may well be letters for you in this pile. There may even be one or two overdue bills for Pale!

Let me thank all those who have helped get the post to BL today:

Mr Emir Hajric, Mr Fikret Gacanovic and Mr Culic Zdravko Radzen for their enthusiastic and very professional cooperation -in the highest traditions of professional postmen.

To Ministers Pavic, who is here today, and to Minister Gacanovic, and Dep Minister Boban, who could not be with us, for their help.

To the UN for providing the trucks to bring these sacks up here from Sarajevo.

To my colleagues at the OSCE for all their hard work over many months to resolve this issue;

Let me also say thank you to the United States Postal Service who have agreed to donate a machine to screen the mail here in Banja Luka.

Today is the beginning of the process of getting the postal network in this country back to normal. I look to Ministers Pavic and Gacanovic to put in place next week the written arrangement needed to ensure regular postal traffic between the Entities.

We also need to work - more generally - to reorganise the postal sector in a way which meets the requirements of all sides, and which is consistent with the Dayton agreement. I commend M Monnory, th Chairman of the Commission on public Corporations, for the work he is doing, and urge Ministers and representatives of postal organisations to work together in a constructive way. My office is happy to take part in those talks as necessary.

Ladies and gentlemen, today is just a further example of the dramatic progress we have seen in recent weeks.

What we were told for months, even years, was impossible is now happening in just days. Where before there was obstruction and interminable wrangling by politicians more interested in their own futures than those of their people, now we are starting to see leadership; common sense; a real desire to get things done and to get this country moving again.

We are seeing steps which are bringing real benefits to the lives of the people in the RS. In just over a couple of weeks, we have seen:

• a new license plate introduced;
• a new currency announced;
• a new flag unveiled.

And we have seen what a difference having a government committed to working constructively with the international community to further the interests of the Serb people can make. Where before, almost all international aid to the RS was blocked because of the activities of a small number of hardline politicians, now it is starting to flow.

The EU has allocated 12m DM, the Dutch Government 1.4m DM, and the Swedish Government 400,000DM for budgetary support.

This means that thanks to the EU and these governments, salaries will be paid for teachers, for the police, for the customs, for the taxes and revenues administration and for justice.

But I very much hope and believe that this is just the start.

We are working hard to channel further aid to the RS and reconstruction in this part of the country.

You need jobs. You need houses. You need to be paid.

No one pretends that we are going to solve all the problems overnight. It is, I am afraid, much easier to tear a society apart than to put it back together. You will need to be patient. But now, at last, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And there is a new commodity abroad in the RS which until recently has been in desperately short supply - a commodity called Hope, Hope with a capital H. Let us work hard together in the weeks ahead to make sure Hope is not disappointed.