Covic: Nobody can reverse decision about census

HDZ leader Dragan Covic responded to the comment made by Mladen Ivanic that he (Covic) knew about the decision of Director of Agency for Statistics BiH Velimir Jukic regarding adopting a unique methodology for data processing for BH census.

- The suggestion that I knew about the census sounds to me like a political spin. I've said it before and I wish to repeat that it has nothing to do with the reality. That is a real political spin. I repeat, I did not exert any influence on publishing methodology of census, Covic said.

He added that the methodology was adopted just as it should have been.

- I don't know why but all of a sudden there are spins about statements of Catholic representatives, heads of Islamic community, census etc. I repeat once again that I did not exert any influence on publishing the census methodology and I think that the decision made by the official agency cannot be reversed, Covic said.

Covic further pointed out that he would now like to focus on two important issues relating to EU accession, which entails finalizing negotiations on Agreement on stabilization and accession, and a final fine tuning of Coordination mechanism, which should be also dealt by Ivanic and the others.

- We will definitely reach an agreement about Coordination mechanism at the session scheduled for 7 June, also taking into consideration remarks that came from RS. If we manage to finalize the process by 13 June when the session of EU Ministers will have taken place, we could expect the green light for the next steps. If we fail to finish in time, we can consider this year lost because there will be no such sessions later this year, Covic concluded.