"The sale will commence under strict supervision" by the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) which has "approved all items on the sale list before the advertisement was placed", SFOR spokesman Mark Hamilton told AFP.

The defense ministry of Bosnia's Serbian entity, the Republika Srpskahad on Friday offered for auction a huge array of army surplus weapons including 105 tanks, 42,048 infantry weapons and 98 artillery weapons such as howitzers and cannons.

It is also planning to auction 68 air defense weapons, 21 air defense missiles, as well as over a million mine parts and more than 13 million munitions.

Any person who wishes to purchase the military equipment "has to be a registered arms dealer and his request will then be verified by SFOR", Hamilton said, adding that "SFOR will monitor any movement or export of these weapons".

An official at the RS defence ministry said the 6,600-strong Bosnian Serb army has a deadline to sell all mine and weapons surpluses by the end of 2003.

Otherwise the weapons will have to be destroyed, the official said.

Postwar Bosnia is split into two semi-independent entities -- Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, who both have separate army forces.

The planned auction comes after the RS military institute was caught last year breaching the UN arms embargo on Iraq.

Over a dozen of Bosnian Serb defense and military officials were sacked and 16 officials are to face a trial scheduled for mid September.

But the RS defence ministry sought to allay the fears, saying in the advertisment that "the end user can not be a country under the arms embargo of the United Nations, US, European Union and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe".

WAR.WIRE