Post by Bozur on Apr 5, 2009 3:31:23 GMT -5
Bosnia Risks Sliding Into Turmoil, Diplomat Says
Wall Street Journal - Mar 25, 2009
The complex political structure includes 14 parliaments in a country split into two entities: Republika Srpska is on territory controlled by ethnic Serbs, ...
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* MARCH 25, 2009, 10:01 P.M. ET
Bosnia Risks Sliding Into Turmoil, Diplomat Says
By MARC CHAMPION
The top diplomat overseeing the divided Balkan nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina says the country risks deep political instability unless the international community acts soon to break a deadlock over the country's future.
Miroslav Lajcak, a Slovak diplomat who ends his two-year tour as Bosnia's international governor on Thursday, says he doesn't see the country sliding back into the civil war of the 1990s between ethnic Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
When the international community brokered the so-called Dayton peace accords to end the war in 1995, it created an Office of the High Representative to oversee the peace, as well as a Peace Implementation Council, or PIC.
The complex political structure includes 14 parliaments in a country split into two entities: Republika Srpska is on territory controlled by ethnic Serbs, who make up a little more than a third of Bosnia's total population. The other is the Federation, which is predominantly populated by Muslims and Croats.
Mr. Lajcak leaves his job deeply frustrated over the mixed messages he sees being sent to Bosnia's leaders by everyone from the U.S. and European Union to Russia, whose re-emergence as an active regional power has helped to split the international community.
Without a clear international strategy, "the country will be sliding backwards with us, the international community presiding over it," Mr. Lajcak said in a recent interview. He is now Slovakia's foreign minister.
In addition to political troubles, Bosnia faces economic woes. On Wednesday, the country's financial authority said it was approaching the International Monetary Fund for help.
All sides -- the PIC nations, the Serbs and Muslims -- agree that Bosnia should eventually join the EU. But the U.S., Britain and most Bosnian Muslims say the country isn't yet ready to govern itself without international administrators like Mr. Lajcak. The EU and Russia disagree.
Those differing views have made it difficult for Mr. Lajcak to use the authority of his office, which includes the power to fire elected politicians and to impose legislative and other changes to make Bosnia a functioning state capable of entering the EU. In that vacuum, nationalist leaders in all three communities -- Muslim, Serb and Croat -- have come to dominate the country's ethnically divided politics.
Serbs led by a charismatic former basketball player openly discuss secession, while a vocal minority of politicians and media observers talk about the possibility of war.
No one interviewed for this article said war is a genuine threat. But the political deadlock marks a sad reversal for a country of about four million that had been a relative success story of postwar reconstruction.
Mr. Lajcak says the international community needs to decide whether to close down or beef up the Office of the High Representative so his successor, Austrian Valentin Inzko, can use the powers he is supposed to wield.
Closing down the office would allow the EU to use the carrot of membership to push Bosnia's fractious leaders into compromise.
A two-day PIC steering board meeting ending Thursday is unlikely to decide either way, according to diplomats involved in the process. The PIC has set seven conditions and objectives for Bosnia to meet before eliminating Mr. Lajcak's old job.
On Wednesday, Bosnia's parliament ratified an agreement on the status of the district of Brcko, one of the key objectives the steering board had set. An agreement on dividing state property between Bosnia's two entities, Serb on one side and Muslim-Croat on the other, remains outstanding. EU diplomats say that could be resolved in as little as two months.
Brussels also wants to disarm the remaining 2,150 EU-led international peacekeepers in Bosnia, downsizing to a training mission.
"There are no security threats in Bosnia, we don't see them," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for the EU's foreign affairs coordinator, Javier Solana. She added that Bosnia's leaders "will have to assume more responsibilities and the Office of the High Representative will have to close sooner rather than later."
The U.S., however, says it will be a little while yet before Bosnia can do without the stick of an international administrator. Turkey and Britain also think it is too soon to disarm the peacekeepers, according to diplomats familiar with the matter.
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