SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The former prime minister launched a new political party Saturday that he said will promote a unified, multi-ethnic Bosnia. Haris Silajdzic is pledging to field candidates in Serb- and Croat-held territories in elections expected in mid-September. Popular with Western leaders and Bosnian intellectuals, he is also seen as the strongest challenger among Muslims to ailing President Alija Izetbegovic.
Silajdzic, addressing more than 800 supporters packed into Sarajevo’s downtown Bosnian Cultural Center, stressed the new Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina was above ethnic divisions widened by four years of fighting.
“Bosnia has always been a monument to pluralism,” he said. “This is deep inside us. All we have to do is to awaken it and to use it. “Will the people here forever live in insecurity, fear and a state of national xenophobia, or will they choose the road of living together, tolerance and confidence?” he asked.
Supporters stood and applauded when a list of top party officials — a mixture of Muslims, Serbs and Croats — was read.
Pitched against Silajdzic is the weight of the Muslim, Serb and Croat nationalist parties that won the country’s first post-communist elections in 1991. They are still firmly in power and keep an iron grip on television, radio and most print media.
Izetbegovic, 71, and Silajdzic, 48, were the Muslim-led government’s key politicians during the war. But Silajdzic, concerned about growing Muslim nationalism, edged away from Izetbegovic and resigned as prime minister in January. He also quit the president’s ruling Muslim Party of Democratic Action.
The September elections will choose the head of the central government that will determine foreign and trade policy for the two sectors of Bosnia — one governed by Bosnian Serbs and one by a Muslim-Croat federation.
Silajdzic said he had taken “first steps” to contact like-minded political forces among Serbs and Croats and planned to open party offices and contest seats even in Serb territory.
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