The heat is being turned up on Bosnia's multiethnic government over its failure to meet deadlines for implementing common policies on citizenship, passports and the appointment of ambassadors. The moves for a boycott on the weak central government have been initiated by the senior international mediator in Bosnia, Mr Carlos Westendorp, and have now drawn support from the European Union presidency and the United States government. They come as the world needs reminding just how vulnerable to disintegration the Dayton agreement is if its provisions for return of refugees and arrest of war criminals are not implemented.
Time is getting short, as many of the governments which have contributed troops to the NATO-commanded peace force there are beginning to realise. In recent weeks there has been a quickening of the pace. Last month NATO troops arrested two Bosnian war crimes suspects. There have been many calls for action to be taken against the Bosnian Croats who prevented the return of Serbian refugees to the town of Jajce, amid disgraceful threats and attacks on UN police and Sfor troops. Similar incidents have happened in Sarajevo. The total number of returned refugees is perhaps 100,000, according to UN figures, out of a total of 800,000 people displaced internally and some 700,000 abroad. Unless progress is seen to be made on the ground, including through international pressure, observers believe there is little or no prospect that a cycle of reconciliation can begin to operate. Progress is blocked by the entrenched leaderships in Croatia, where President Franjo Tudjman was yesterday sworn in for a second term and in Serbia, where Mr Slobodan Milosevic has switched roles to become president of rump Yugoslavia in order to maintain his grip on power. In Bosnia another nationalist leader, Mr Alija Izetbegovic, is today to meet Mr Tudjman to see how more life can be breathed into the MuslimCroat Federation. The weak Bosnian inter-ethnic government is fundamentally divided over what kind of country they would like to see, which continually frustrates their efforts to make even the most prosaic of decisions, let alone those on such sensitive matters as citizenship. The Bosnian Serbs have boycotted its meetings in the name of a separate state, the Bosnians insist on common citizenship, while the Croats are rather more flexible. The man who brokered the Dayton agreement, Mr Richard Holbrooke, is returning to Bosnia with a mandate from President Clinton to speed up progress towards implementing the agreements reached there in advance of the withdrawal deadline for the NATO force next May. It will be interesting to see whether he can reproduce the blunt and direct methods which fashioned that piece of realpolitik on this occasion. He will need to co-operate with Mr Westendorp and to give himself some time to exert influence on the various interests involved. Leverage is available on Croatia and Serbia through their desire for greater international participation. Mr Westendorp has demonstrated that he too has leverage through western aid to the Bosnian government. Both men would also need to remind their principals that they still have a central role to play, not least in further arrests of those accused of war crimes.