Source: http://www.rferl.org/archive/Transmissi ... 8/648.html

Bosnia To Mark Embarrassing Anniversary

Just days before the first anniversary of a general election on October 3, leaders of Bosnia's main political parties failed on September 26 in their latest attempt to reconcile views on how the country should function, and left it without any agreement on a new central government.

This puts Bosnia near the top of a global list, second only to a European Union founding member, but this will be no cause for celebration, unless perhaps for those working to bring about the country's demise.

Bosnia wants to join Europe one day but it will not get very far if it emulates the example of Belgium, which has been without a government for more than 470 days because of bickering between Flemish and Walloon ethnic groups.

One immediate victim of yet another fiasco from Bosnia's Muslim, Serb and Croat politicians is financial aid to the tune of 96 million euros from the European Union.

The EU had given Bosnians an extra week to work out how this money would be divided between the state and two autonomous regions, or lose it all.

This is all but certain to happen now.

Playing Into The Hands Of Serb Nationalists

But what is perhaps of greater import than losing financial aid is the fact that the failure plays right into the hands of Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik and those who back him in his efforts to prove that Bosnia, as designed under the 1995 U.S.-led Dayton peace agreement, is not viable.

To the dismay of Western peace overseers, who impotently watch from the sidelines, Bosnia has become bogged down on its road to Europe since signing a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union three years ago, which was supposed to serve as a staging post for western Balkan countries en route to EU membership.

"A dangerous political standstill continues," said a press release from the embassy of the United States, which is the main sponsor of Bosnia's 16-year-old peace process along with the EU. "Party leaders must overcome their narrow individual political interests and form the Council of Ministers in order to open up possibilities for economic and social development."

Local media reported in the run-up to the meeting in the northern city of Brcko that Dodik and Zlatko Lagumdzija, the leader of the biggest multiethnic party, which actually enjoys mostly Muslim support, were close to striking an agreement on how to distribute ten ministerial posts in the central government and break the deadlock

It all fell through, however, on the recurring issue of the representation of Croats, the smallest ethnic group and the partners to Muslims in their Federation.



Dodik, a onetime-Western-darling-turned-hardcore-nationalist who is the absolute master of Republika Srpska, the Serb Republic advocating separation from Bosnia, said Lagumdzija's Social Democrats (SDP), who govern in the Federation with the support of the main Muslim and two fringe Croat parties, cannot nominate three Croats to the state's Council of Ministers.

Dodik insists Lagumdzija can only nominate Muslims, while the two main Croat parties, HDZ and HDZ 1990, should nominate Croats. The support of Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats and the two HDZ parties is crucial for the approval of the cabinet in the state parliament.

Exacerbating Ethnic Divisions

Croat leaders Dragan Covic (HDZ) and Bozo Ljubic (HDZ 1990) say Lagumdzija is interpreting the Constitution incorrectly. They argue that officials from one ethnic group cannot just be members of that group; they need to legitimately represent it.

Covic and Ljubic had earlier threatened to form a third entity, which would revive the wartime self-proclaimed statelet of Herzeg-Bosna, after the Croat member of the country's three-man presidency was elected with mostly Muslim backing a year ago and they were left out of the federal government after the vote.

Conversely, together with some Serb and Croat politicians and intellectuals, as well as many Western officials and Balkan watchers, Muslims share the view that this would further cement ethnic divisions and pave the way for future disintegration.

"It would be like a return to the 17th or 18th century, to the pre-political phase," said Slavo Kukic, an ethnic Croat university professor in the southern town of Mostar, who in June didn't get support from the main Serb and Croat parties in the parliament as the SDP's candidate for prime minister.

The EU, whose foreign minister Catherine Ashton managed in May to persuade Dodik not to hold a potentially far-reaching referendum on rejecting decisions by the international envoy and rulings by the state court for war crimes, has said it wants to get more actively involved in sorting out the mess.

It picked Danish career diplomat Peter Sorensen as the new head of its mission, but also as its special representative, the post which has so far been twinned with that of the international High Representative, currently Valentin Inzko of Austria.

The EU hopes that persuading Bosnians to work together in beefed-up joint institutions would increase the state's functionality and boost their credibility, thereby prompting the United States and the other main peace sponsors to abolish the executive-power-wielding post of High Representative.

But at an introductory meeting with Sorensen earlier this month, Dodik indicated that this is not the road he plans to travel down, saying that Bosnia needed less joint institutions and better interethnic co-ordination, much like two independent countries.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... b960ba.4e1

A year after polls, Bosnia still without government
By Rusmir Smajilhodzic (AFP)

SARAJEVO — A year after last October's general election, Bosnia is still without a central government, with the inability of political leaders to agree on a future cabinet hampering the bid for EU integration.

"Instead of seeking a compromise, the six parties (taking part in the negotiations) are stuck in their hardline positions," explained Srecko Latal of the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank.

Condemning the "irresponsibility" of political leaders, Latal told AFP that the absence of a new government "will cost Bosnia a lot, as this situation ruins its (international) reputation."

He noted that the country has seen its credit ratings downgraded by international financial agencies, while foreign investments in the Balkan country have fallen 75 percent since 2009.

For analyst Tanja Topic the problem is that Bosnia has no "culture of compromise."

"It is considered a weakness," Topic said.

This is the longest political crisis in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-1995 inter-ethnic war.

Since the October 2010 general election, the outgoing government has been charged with handling current affairs, but cannot introduce the reforms necessary for Bosnia to be in a position to join the European Union.

The central government links the country's two post-war entities - the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serbs' Republika Srpska.

Both Brussels and Washington support strengthening the central government's powers in order to implement political, judicial and economic reforms.

Numerous attempts to define a new government cabinet -- a prime minister and the heads of nine ministries -- have failed, with the main dispute over the distribution of posts reserved for Croatian representatives.

"We have all agreed that a future council of ministers (government) should consist of three Bosnians (Muslims), three Serbs, three Croats and one minister who would represent other" communities, said Bosnian Muslim leader Sulejman Tihic.

But the disagreement is over the division of the posts reserved for Bosnian Croats, he said.

Both the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the breakaway HDZ-1990 group insist that they are the only "legitimate" representatives of the Bosnian Croats and demand the positions in the government reserved for the Croat community.
The multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party -- in coalition with the main Bosnian Muslim SDA party -- has attracted a certain amount of support among Bosnian Croat voters and also wants the posts reserved for this community.

The Croat community represents between 10 and 14 percent of Bosnia's total population, while Bosnian Muslims make 40-48 percent of the 3.9 million inhabitants of this former Yugoslav republic.

Legislation does not envisage early elections so the political impasse could in theory last till the next scheduled vote in 2014.

The introduction of reforms, already slow since 2006 because of inter-ethnic disputes, has practically ground to a halt since last year.

The endless political stalemate has delayed Bosnia's progress towards the European Union, hampering goals for it to apply for membership and enlarging the gap between Bosnia and other states in the region.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/0 ... H020111004

Analysis: Bosnia flounders, 12 months without government

By Daria Sito-Sucic

(Reuters) - Hopes for a quick government in Bosnia were hardly high when rival ethnic nationalists polled strongly in an election last October.

But a year on -- and with Serbs, Croats and Muslims still deadlocked -- the Balkan country risks further disintegration, cut off from international funding and paralysed between opposing visions of its future.

"We don't even read the constitution in the same way," Zlatko Lagumdzija, head of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), said last week.

He spoke after leaders of the six largest parties again failed to overcome their differences in talks on forming a national government that would bridge Serbs, Croats and Muslims in some semblance of a unitary state almost two decades since war tore them apart.

The impasse has cost the country of 3.8 million people access to vital international funds, and integration into the European Union is effectively on hold. Next year, Bosnia faces running out of cash if it doesn't get the funds.

The lack of a central government is also seen as a disincentive to foreign investment which has already fallen sharply in the last few years.

At the heart of the dispute are competing visions of Bosnia's future and how it should be governed -- as a multi-ethnic, coherent state or as the divided, dysfunctional entity created by the 1995 Dayton peace treaty that ended the fighting.

With the rest of the ex-Yugoslav republics pushing to join Slovenia in the EU, Bosnia faces yet more disappointment when Brussels issues its latest report card on October 12.

Bosnia's 1992-95 war -- in which about 100,000 people died -- ended in a U.S.-negotiated peace deal that split the country into two autonomous, ethnically-based regions with a rotating presidential triumvirate and an international overseer.

The unwieldy, highly decentralised arrangement has long acted as a brake on development, but the rivalry between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb republic -- linked by a weak central government -- has reached new heights in recent years as nationalists pursue opposing agendas.

When the country voted a year ago, Serb and Croat nationalists emerged ever stronger among their ethnic constituencies.

But at the national level, the Muslim-led SDP -- the closest thing Bosnia has to a multi-ethnic party -- has upset the balance by proposing Croats from its own ranks for positions in the national government, angering the nationalists who say the SDP is essentially a Muslim party which can only lay claim to Muslim positions.

The dispute has turned on its head the concept of strict ethnic division and power-sharing, as enshrined under Dayton.

The Serb republic has long demanded strict adherence to Dayton, even going so far as to threaten secession if Bosnia becomes more integrated as sought by the SDP and, in principle, the country's Western backers.

RISK OF SOCIAL UNREST

"We have a situation here where one party is trying to transcend the Dayton framework, which worked largely on power-sharing between nationalist parties," said a Western diplomat, who declined to be named.

"It's difficult, because the rules are still set by Dayton, but trying to move beyond a nationalist framework is in the long-term interest of the country."

Meanwhile, ratings agencies have downgraded Bosnia's outlook and the International Monetary Fund and EU are withholding funds already written into the state budget, leaving the country facing a 2011 shortfall that could see state institutions close next year.

Foreign direct investment has slowed dramatically, by about 70 percent since 2008 given the economic crisis abroad and the political turmoil at home. Unemployment is rising, and carrying with it the risk of social unrest.

"There is a serious danger of Bosnia falling behind its neighbours in terms where it stands in EU accession process," Britain's ambassador to Bosnia, Nigel Casey, told Reuters in an interview.

"The consequences are already being felt on the economy. A lack of the central government is a serious disincentive for serious investors."

But some analysts argue that even if the rival blocs agree on a government, it remains unlikely such a coalition could function effectively given the competing ideologies.

"How can you have a government that will pursue even minimal reforms if you have diametrically opposed interests," said Kurt Bassuener, senior associate at the Democratisation Policy Council think-tank.

Some Bosnians are calling for another vote.

"We want a new election, we don't want to pay for a two-layer government," said conceptual artist Damir Niksic, who joined other activists in a self-proclaimed 'alternative' cabinet which tried to enter the government building in Sarajevo on Monday.

They were stopped by security guards.

A caretaker government is in place, but lacks a majority in parliament to pass legislation. Under Bosnia's hybrid legal framework, there is no such thing as an early election or an institution that can call it.