Global Policy Forum

The Bosnian Serb parliament has adopted a long-awaited law on cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal that is prosecuting crimes committed during the Balkan wars.

The law was adopted Tuesday with 42 lawmakers voting for and nine against the measure. There were 25 abstentions.

The Bosnian Serb government has been the last regional authority in the former Yugoslavia refusing to hand over war crimes suspects to the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands.

From a legal point of view, a separate law was not required since the obligation to cooperate with the tribunal derives from Bosnia's constitution and the 1995 Dayton peace accord.

But for all the six postwar years, Bosnian Serbs have ignored this part of the peace agreement and constitution, arguing the tribunal has an anti-Serb bias.

The new moderate Bosnian Serb government of Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic has insisted that the Bosnian Serb ministate should have a separate law stipulating who is obliged to arrest war crimes suspects. Postwar Bosnia is comprised of the Bosnian Serb ministate and a Muslim-Croat federation.

In order to adopt the ruling, Ivanic needed a majority in parliament, which is dominated by the Serb Democratic Party founded by the divided country's most wanted man, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic, were indicted five years ago by the U.N. tribunal for genocide and are both on the run, presumably somewhere in the territory controlled by the Bosnian Serbs.

Continued refusal to cooperate with The Hague would lead to further isolation and might trigger economic sanctions against the Bosnian Serb government, which is in financial distress.

International officials claim at least 15 publicly indicted suspects are hiding in the Bosnian Serb-controlled areas of the country, including Karadzic.