http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0705140056may14,1,7229610 .story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true Old divides plague Bosnia Twelve years after the Dayton peace accords ended a bloody sectarian war, cracks in Bosnia-Herzegovina's fragile foundation are showing -- and growing wider By Christine Spolar Tribune foreign correspondent Published May 14, 2007 SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Nearly 12 years from war, Bosnia-Herzegovina is again flirting with danger. Feuding among Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders has upended a yearlong attempt to write a constitution. Negotiations over a single national police force have bottomed out again. Since February, Muslims and Serbs have been trading barbs over war crimes. European Union monitors who arrived this spring to check the pulse of reforms quickly backed away from serious talks. The threat of bullets is long gone, and a once-robust peacekeeping mission has wound down. But Bosnian leaders are lagging in efforts to cooperate, indulging in what diplomats have called dangerous backsliding. That has allowed ethnic and bureaucratic divisions to again undercut the nation's prospects. Even nature's wrath turned nastier because of the infighting. People still grouse about snows that clogged this storied Winter Olympic city two years ago, but travel in Sarajevo was disrupted not because of a lack of road crews. Rather, there were so many road departments in Bosnia's complex government that no one was sure who should plow. "We're still dealing with the legacy of war rather than a future," said Tanja Preradovic, a 27-year-old social worker in the city of Banja Luka, the heart of Serb political life. "There are layers and layers of government -- and we are still caught up in ethnic issues. That's all the politicians spend time on." "The situation has become the most unstable since the war," said Aladin Radaslic, a Muslim law student from Sarajevo. "This country needs change, and these people are incapable of doing it." Bosnia-Herzegovina was the headline Balkan battleground of the 1990s, site of the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. A negotiated peace in 1995 held some promise in the first years. But in the past six months, and since legislative elections in October, ethnic and nationalist baiting has been startlingly raw. The bombastic rhetoric, in a country still under the thumb of international monitors, raises questions of when and even whether Bosnia could survive on its own. Bosnia, a country of 4.5 million people, was divided up in a compromise to appease three warring factions -- Serbs, Muslims and Croats -- in what once was the most ethnically diverse republic in the former Yugoslavia. It ended up more or less one state with two halves, each with its own government, parliament, police, customs and flag. A tale of 2 Bosnias Bosnian Serbs were handed one half known as Republika Srpska. Bosnian Muslims and Croats were given the other, with more layers of government added. The Muslim-Croat half, known as the federation, was freckled with an additional 10 political bodies or cantons that allowed local government to recognize -- or, as detractors claimed, emphasize -- ethnic majorities. Bosnia's national government was to be led by a parliament and a three-person presidency that rotated among the ethnic groups. The Dayton peace accords, signed by Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders in 1995, were meant to end fighting and carve out a foundation for cooperation. But the system created by the agreement is increasingly seen as part of the problem. Ethnic divisions still fester. Serb leaders most recently have balked at long-expressed demands to further centralize government, including folding their police into a national force. Serbs have gone so far as to raise the idea of a vote for independence or annexation to neighboring Serbia. Muslim politicians, for their part, increasingly insist that it is time for a single Bosnian identity to be enforced. They want ethnic entities as defined in the peace process to be scrapped. Those leaders also are demanding that new rulings about war crimes be used to re-shape Bosnia. An international court ruled in February that the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica, a city deep in Serb territory, was an act of genocide by Serb forces. Muslims now want Srebrenica freed from Serb overview and run by the Bosnian state as a separate district. In interviews, neither side's leaders appeared open to compromise. "All unhealed wounds are used for political purposes," Milan Jelic, president of Republika Srpska, said in dismissing the demand for Srebrenica. "We still support a complex, decentralized state." Fundamental changes in government would undercut the Serbs and break Bosnia as a nation, he said. Calling for an end to Dayton continue <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0705140056may14,1,722961 0.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed> >> ____________ Virus checked by G DATA AntiVirusKit Version: AVK 17.4668 from 15.05.2007 Virus news: www.antiviruslab.com
