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Bildt Invites Bosnian Factions To Post-War Talks in June
By Jovan Kovacic
"At the conference table there will be identifying name plates. Behind the plate, Bosnia and Herzegovina, there will be two representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, three from the Federation and three from (Bosnian Serb) Republika Srpska," Maclay told Reuterss. "The Federation and Republika Srpska will be identified by entity name plates. This arrangement conforms to the peace agreement. All three will be invited to speak," he said.
The Dayton accord signed last December has split Bosnia into a loose union comprised of almost two equal entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska. Bosnian Croat authorities and the mainly-Muslim government have joint federation authorities. The Muslims still have their own government until the elections set for mid-September.
After the elections, Serbs are also due to join authorities governing the Bosnian union. But the Serbs have so far shown no inclination to reintegrate themselves with their former foes. Hardline Serb leader Radovan Karadzic banned his moderate prime minister Rajko Kasagic from attending an international donors conference in April, protesting an invitation which treated the Serbs as part of a joint Bosnian delegation.
Karadzic, an indicted war criminal who is bent on preventing resotoration of Bosnia's pre-war multi-ethnic fabric, sacked Kasagic for urging cooperation with his former foes. Maclay said concerns about representation at post-war talks had been worked out after consultations between Bildt's senior adviser Paulline Neville-Jones and the Bosnian Serb leadership. "We are encouraged by the consultations and we believe the Serbs will participate. We talked about it and we thrashed it out," he said.
Kasagic's hardline successor Gojko Klickovic, however, said after meeting Neville-Jones that the Serb delegation will attend the Florence conference as an independent delegation. It was not immediately clear whether Klickovic's comment was just more tough talk before yielding to pressure or the Serb interpretation of the arrangement.
Bildt's proposal will be a major test for the Bosnian Serb hardliners as the international community steps up calls for Karadzic to stand aside as required by the peace accord. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on Friday assured visiting U.S. envoy John Kornblum that he will engineer Karadzic's departure from office. The West has apparently climbed down from earlier demands that Milosevic must also keep his Dayton promise and hand Karadzic over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. "Karadzic's ouster would leave in place other Serb leaders
just as bent on isolationist policy," one diplomat said. "If they were to accept Bildt's invitation to Florence on such grounds would be a sign of their readiness to cooperate with the international community," he said. |
SARAJEVO, May 31 (Reuters) - International mediator Carl Bildt has invited Bosnian factions to post-war talks in June as one delegation but with distinctive labelling in a compromise to avert a Serb boycott, his spokesman said on Friday. Bildt's proposal was aimed at balancing demands by Bosnia's Serb entity and Muslim-Croat federation over how they wish to be represented at a mid-term review of the Dayton peace accord in Florence, said Michael Maclay, spokesman for the international community's High Representative in Bosnia.
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