Ethnic rivalry may still tear Bosnia: envoy

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Rivalries between Bosnia's ethnic leaders are slowing reform and could lead to a split of the Balkan nation, international peace envoy Miroslav Lajcak was quoted saying Wednesday. Lajcak told the Dnevni Avaz newspaper that animosity between the country's two regions, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, has been weakening the state and blocking its progress toward eventual European Union membership. The two autonomous regions, created under the Dayton peace agreement that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war, co-exist in an uneasy alliance under a weak central authority. "You can't say that you are for Bosnia-Herzegovina and at the same time treat half of the country as an enemy state... You can't say that you respect Bosnia-Herzegovina while doing everything to weaken state institutions," Lajcak was quoted saying in a criticism of both Muslim and Serb leaders. Bosnia's Croats, the smallest ethnic grouping in the country, have largely stayed on the sidelines during the Muslim-Serb dispute. Lajcak added he has twice before seen the type of atmosphere now evident in Bosnia, drawing parallels to regional relations in Czechoslovakia and the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, both of which split into separate countries in 1993 and 2006 respectively. Hostilities between Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Serb leaders have dominated the Bosnian political scene since the parliamentary election in October 2006. Bosnian Serbs want to preserve a high degree of regional autonomy at the expense of central state institutions that Bosnia needs for membership talks with the EU, while the Muslims want a more centralized state. Bosnia signed last June the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the first rung on the ladder toward eventual membership of the 27-member bloc. But hostile rhetoric has flared up again before October 5 local elections, with Serbs threatening to pull out of a joint power network and obstructing the public broadcaster's work. The Bosnian Serb government has also forbidden the regional tax authority and other institutions from providing the state intelligence service and the prosecutor's office with information requested for investigation purposes. In a separate statement Wednesday, Lajcak asked the Bosnian Serb government to revoke the instruction. "I expect them to react seriously as the situation requires," Lajcak said in the statement. "This is about the rule of law and about separation of politics from judicial matters." The State Investigation and Protection Agency has asked the Bosnian Serb authorities to provide it with tax returns from two companies that were involved in government-funded projects, but the government has said it is not obliged to do so. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Aaron Gray-Block and Jon Boyle) ʘ