Ex-peace envoys: Bosnian peace deal may collapse

Bosnia's fragile peace deal is in danger of collapsing as the world turns its attention elsewhere, the U.S. architect of the agreement and another top envoy warned Wednesday.

Former U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke and Paddy Ashdown, the former international administrator in Bosnia, said another Bosnia crisis is ready to erupt because Bosnian Serbs are exploiting the lack of U.S. attention and the European Union's inability to deal with Bosnia's problems to create the conditions to secede.

Their comments were published in Bosnia's daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz.

Tens of thousands of people were killed before the peace deal ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Christian Orthodox Serbs fought to annex parts of the country to neighboring Serbia and to cleanse the region of other ethnic groups, while Muslim Bosniaks and Roman Catholic Croats fought to keep the country together and independent.

Holbrooke brokered a peace deal that divided the country into two fairly autonomous ministates _ one for the Bosnian Serbs and the other shared by the Bosniaks and the Croats. The two are linked by joint institutions into one state.

Now, the envoy say the Bosnian Serbs are trying to weaken central institutions so the country disintegrates, while Bosniaks and Croats are trying to strengthen them to better unite the country.

The two former envoys claim that Russia backs the most influential Bosnian Serb _ the prime minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who has a clear policy of putting his region "in a position to secede if the opportunity arises."

In the past two years, Dodik has reversed much of the real progress Bosnia has made toward being a functioning state, the envoys said.

"(Russia is) making trouble for the US and EU where possible" and its efforts must be rebuffed, the envoys wrote.

Dodik's main rival, the current president of Bosnia, Haris Silajdzic, stresses the need to abolish ethnic divisions.

"This toxic interaction is at the heart of today's Bosnian crisis. As a result, the suspicion and fear that began the war in 1992 has been reinvigorated," the envoys wrote.

They urged the EU and the new US administration to get more engaged in Bosnia before the situation deteriorates.

"(Otherwise, things could get) very nasty quickly. By now, we should all know the price of that," Holbrooke and Ashdown warned.