Bosnia Completes Key Police Reform, Awaits EU Pact

The central parliament´s upper house approved the reform laws a week after they were passed by the lower house.

Bosnia's upper house of parliament rubber-stamped a police reform law on Wednesday that ends four years of inter-ethnic negotiations and fulfils the European Union's main condition for closer ties. The EU has said it would sign the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Bosnia, the first step towards membership, only after the country approved legislation reforming its ethnically separate police forces.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the final adoption of the police reform laws "paves the way towards signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement".

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called it a "decisive step" and said he hoped the SAA could be signed "soon, on the basis of a positive assessment of all the remaining elements".

EU foreign ministers could sign the SAA as early as a meeting scheduled for Luxembourg on April 28-29.

The central parliament's upper house approved the reform laws a week after they were passed by the lower house. The vote came after a compromise between Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats.

"It's difficult to say if these laws are good because nothing is absolutely good," Branko Zrno, a Croat MP, told reporters. "It is true they do not resolve all the issues but we have agreed on them in the interest of the (SAA) signature."

Bosnia's international peace overseer Miroslav Lajcak welcomed the adoption of the laws.

"This decision sends a strong signal to the EU and to investors that Bosnia-Herzegovina is making progress and is opened for business," he said in a statement.

EU SEEKS STABILITY

Fellow ex-Yugoslav state Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said it would do everything in its power so Bosnia signs the SAA on April 28.

"If there are technical difficulties, the next date for the signing will be May 26," Natasa Vodusek, Slovenian ambassador to Bosnia, was quoted as saying by Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje.

Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in February, are the only states in the Balkans without the SAA. The EU is keen to bring in all ex-Yugoslav states to ensure stability on its southeastern borders.

Since the end of the 1992-95 war, Bosnia's police has operated as two separate forces, one for each of the two autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic.

The Serbs opposed the original Western-backed reform that envisaged the unification of the two forces, seeing it as an erosion of a cornerstone of their autonomy.

For almost four years they blocked it, until finally accepting a compromise plan offered by Lajcak.

Critics say the envoy's proposal was a major dilution of the original and reform will be largely cosmetic. The EU, however, has pledged to accept whatever local politicians agree on as long as it means police will operate without ethnic bias.