The High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, today issued a Decision imposing amoratorium on changing the names of streets, squares, bridges and all such public places by any City-Municipality in the City of Mostar and specifically banning any related activity that could be viewed as a provocation likely to undermine the reorganization of Mostar.
“It’s time we took the politics out of this issue,” the High Representative said when issuing the Decision. “The mechanisms exist under the Mostar Statute, to ensure that place names will not be used as a provocation, and the issue of names cannot be exploited as a means of upsetting the best efforts of the people of Mostar to leave behind a fractious past and move forward to a positive future.”
Under the High Representative’s Decision any decisions passed after 28 January 2004 assigning new names are prohibited and efforts to change existing names are suspended until and unless these decisions are adopted by the City Council, in accordance with the Statute of the City of Mostar.