By Ian Traynor
Bosnia is facing its worst crisis since the end of the war 16 years ago because of Serb secessionist policies aimed at paralysing the country, according to the top international official overseeing the state.
In an interview with the Guardian, Valentin Inzko, the Austrian diplomat who is the international community's high representative in Sarajevo, warned he would act to halt a referendum called by Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, on whether to reject Bosnia's state war crimes court and special prosecutor's office established in 2005 by international decree.
Since the Dayton agreement, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995, the country has been split into two political entities: a Serbian portion known as the Republika Srpska, and the Muslim-Croat alliance, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, pledged this week not to back down and to go ahead with the vote.
Inzko said heavy European Union sanctions could be imposed on Dodik and his coterie if he did not back down from the vote, which the Bosnian Serb parliament approved by a huge majority this month.
"This is definitely the most serious crisis since the signing of the Dayton agreement," said Inzko. "Never before has such a referendum been planned. The intention is to roll back all the achievements. It challenges the role of the high representative. It would be a direct attack on the Dayton settlement. This cannot be allowed. I would repeal this law."
The parliament's decision to stage the referendum was posted officially on Wednesday, meaning that the vote must take place within eight weeks. Dodik argued that the court and the prosecutors were biased against Serbs and that the court's authority should be rejected. He claimed the Bosnian Muslim leadership, with international support, was bent on creating a domineering Islamic state.
Dodik regularly taunts the international envoys, who have struggled to manage Bosnia since the 1990s, professes no loyalty to a state called Bosnia-Herzegovina, and constantly questions its viability as a country. The referendum is widely seen as his most destabilising move and a step towards Bosnia's break-up, which could trigger a new war.
"Many think this referendum is a rehearsal for a future one on Republika Srpska status [secession], but those are just speculations, unrealistic at this time," he said last week.
According to senior diplomats, Miroslav Lajcak, the EU's Balkan envoy, will travel to Banja Luka (seat of Republika Srpska's government and assembly), on Friday to order Dodik to call off the vote.
Inzko indicated that the international community was heading for a showdown with Dodik and that at some point in the next fortnight he would invoke his official powers to try to prevent the referendum taking place.
"I hope [Lajcak] can talk them out of doing this. Otherwise I will have to act. The [Bosnian Serb] law would be annulled. The deadline can't be very long, 10 days to two weeks maximum."
Lajcak is expected to warn Dodik on Friday that if he defies the international referendum ban, he could have EU sanctions imposed on him similar to those placed on Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi: a ban on travel and the freezing of his assets and bank accounts.
EU governments recently agreed on a new range of incentives and disincentives aimed at reversing years of failure in Bosnia. Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, is about to appoint a new special representative in Sarajevo, who will have increased powers. Dominic Asquith, the UK ambassador in Cairo and great-grandson of prime minister Herbert Asquith, is tipped for the post.
While Bosnia's dismal condition has been worsening for five years, the showdown with Dodik stands to intensify its dangerous drift and paralysis. The political deadlock since elections last October has left the country without a central government for seven months, with no breakthrough in sight.
Describing Bosnia as the "principal challenge to stability in Europe this year", James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, said last month that the country was "in disarray."
"Ethnic Serb rhetoric about seceding from Bosnia will continue to inflame passions," he reported. "Ethnic agendas still dominate the political process … US-EU efforts to broker compromises have met with little success."
While Dodik is seen as the bigger problem, the Muslim-Croat half of the country is also acutely dysfunctional. The main Bosnian Croat leaders, based in Mostar in the south-west, are effectively boycotting the federation government and parliament after losing out in coalition negotiations on a new federation government. They are complaining bitterly about being ignored by the larger Bosniak Muslim community, and last week formed the Croatian National Assembly to co-ordinate policy-making across ethnic Croat majority areas.
"I don't have a problem with this if it is constitutional," said Inzko. "We will see if they establish parallel structures or not. That's very important. Then I'd have to do something."
The Croats are demanding that Bosnia be split into three along ethnic lines to include a separate Croatian entity. Dodik is encouraging the demands for Croatian autonomy to weaken the centre, and hasten the break-up of a country he constantly calls illegitimate and unworkable.
Should he ultimately succeed, say senior diplomats in Sarajevo, it will mean a belated triumph for Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders of the 1990s who led the war effort to destroy the country and were indicted for genocide.
"That would mean Srebrenica [where the Serbs murdered 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males] would be abroad for the Bosnian Muslims," said a senior diplomat. "The international community will never accept that."
