Finally the newparliament of Bosnia'sMuslim Croat Federation gets the approval it has been waiting for, a week afterit was blocked for background checks.

That's not the end for the waiting of the parliament, as it will also bewaiting for the approval of 2007's budget, one day before a decision on thetemporary financing of the region expires. The new budget is set to be approvedon the 4th of April by the central parliament.

The Ethnic Muslim Nedzad Brankovic was voted as Prime Minister by the lowerhouse in addition to approving his 16-member cabinet representing the mainMuslim and Croat parties including two Serb ministers.

The High Representative, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, who postponed the processof assigning the new parliament last week, gave the green light on the cabinetline-up after he replaced the original interior minister with another Muslim.

However, Schwarz-Schilling did not name the original candidate or the reasonbehind his rejection.

The new parliament was previously delayed as a result of the power sharingdifficulties that the Muslim and Croat parties had.

The new Prime Minister, Nedzad Brankovic is a member of the main Muslim Partyof Democratic Action (SDA) who served as a transport and communicationsminister in the previous government. Brankovic also served as the head of thestate railways and the engineering firm Energoinvest before that.

• Background

In 1996, the Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that two Balkanmembers agreed to create a federation to jointly govern Muslims and Croats inhalf of Bosnia.The previous was a result of many years of pledging by the Bosnian PresidentAlija Izetbegovic and the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman to the politiciansunder their control to join in a Muslim-Croat federation.

That's how it all started.

On the 22nd of March 2007, the new government of Bosnia's Muslim-CroatFederation entity was sworn before its parliament in Sarajevo; six months afterthe general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Despite that, the International Administrator in Bosnia; Christian Schwarz-Schillingsuspended last week the previously mentioned vote. Schwarz-Schilling claimedthat the government of the Muslim-Croat entity was formed before all thenominated ministers went through a vetting process by his office. This vettingprocess initially started in 2005 when the Bosnia-Herzegovina's politiciansdecided to start strengthening the systems that scrutinize the government andtherefore prevents the abuses of power.

It's worth mentioning that another Bosnian entity, the Serb-run Srpska Republic, formed itsgovernment last November.

Bosnia-Herzegovina was administratively divided into two entities, the Srpska Republicand the Muslim-Croat Federation by the Dayton Peace Agreement, which brought toan end the country's 1992-1995 war.

Though each entity has its own president, government and parliament, thecountry is run by the central authorities - a tripartite state Presidency,Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina.