Analysts and observers of the region said the situation could unravel the United States-brokered Dayton accords of 1995, which ended a savage war that killed more than 100,000 people, most of them Muslims, between 1992 and 1995. The pact divided Bosnia and Herzegovina into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, presided over by a decentralized political system that reinforced rather than healed ethnic divisions.
The crisis comes at a critical time, just a few weeks after the United Nations and European Union envoy to Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, was appointed foreign minister of his native Slovakia, creating what analysts called a potentially dangerous power vacuum. United Nations officials stressed Tuesday that Mr. Lajcak would continue to exercise his powers until a replacement was found.
Srecko Latal, a Bosnia specialist at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo, the country’s capital, warned that the West, distracted by the global financial crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan, was ignoring trouble signs in Bosnia, in its own backyard. “The United States and the European Union must engage, not just for the sake of Bosnia but because the world can’t afford to allow what happened the last time,” he said.
Bosnia’s security is guaranteed by 2,000 European Union peacekeepers. But Mr. Latal said the force was not strong enough to contain hostilities, should they erupt. Sketching a worst-case possibility, he warned that if the Serb Republic declared independence, neighboring Croatia would respond by sending in troops, and Bosnian Muslims would take up arms.
Bosnian Serb officials, Western diplomats and the police said the crisis began last week when the country’s state police agency sent a report to the State Prosecutor’s Office with allegations involving the Serb Republic’s prime minister, Milorad Dodik.
The case outlined in the State Investigation and Protection Agency report related to corruption, fraud and misuse of finances involving several important government contracts in the Bosnian Serb Republic. They included allegations concerning a $146 million government building in Banja Luka.
Gordan Milosevic, a spokesman for Mr. Dodik, said Tuesday by telephone that the allegations were politically motivated. He said the case breached due process because it had been forwarded without the approval of top Bosnian Serb officials in the State Investigation and Protection Agency and the prosecutor’s office.
Mr. Dodik expressed indignation last weekend, saying he was the victim of a witch hunt aimed at undermining him and the Bosnian Serb Republic. “Even the little faith I had in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is now lost due to this farce with the criminal charges against me,” he said last week. “They have made this country pointless.”
He also vented his ire at a meeting in Mostar, where leaders of Bosnia’s three main ethnic groups were discussing how to press forward with changes to the Constitution. Attendees at the meeting said Mr. Dodik stormed out after one hour. Before leaving, they said, he delivered an ultimatum that a new constitution could proceed only if it affirmed the right of the Bosnian Serb Republic to national self-determination and enshrined its right to hold a referendum on independence.
Adding to the tensions, Mr. Dodik said recently that the investigation against him had probably been devised by the deputy United Nations high representative in Bosnia, Raffi Gregorian. In November, Mr. Dodik filed criminal charges against Mr. Gregorian and foreign prosecutors in Bosnia, accusing them of plotting against his government after they opened a corruption investigation into the Serb Republic’s awarding of government contracts.
The Serbian member of the country’s three-member presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, called over the weekend on all Bosnian Serb political parties, citizens and nongovernmental organizations to support the Bosnian Serb government. One Serbian veterans’ association warned that Bosnia’s Muslims were secretly arming themselves, and Bishop Grigorije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, warned that “nobody should play around with Republika Srpska.”
But Western diplomats and officials on both sides of the ethnic divide stressed that the conflict was a political war of words that was unlikely to spill over into violence. “Dodik wants to make clear that the right of the Republika Srpska to exist is beyond dispute,” said Mr. Milosevic, Mr. Dodik’s spokesman. “No one wants war.”
Serbian analysts said that Mr. Dodik had no intention of seceding, at least in the near term, and that he was using the international political vacuum in Bosnia to cement his control over the republic.
Beyond the obvious threat of provoking a war, they said, secession was not an attractive option for Mr. Dodik, because it would mean aligning the Serb Republic with Serbia or the Russian Federation, which would severely diminish his power. It also would inevitably lead to international isolation.
