Bosnian Serbs say Muslims abused state institution

The 64-year-old Ganic was taken to the prison after he was arrested as he tried to leave Britain from London´s Heathrow airport.

BANJA LUKA, March 12, 2010 (AFP) - Top Bosnian Serb officials on Friday accused their Muslim counterparts of abusing state institutions in the case of Bosnian ex-leader Ejup Ganic, SRNA news agency reported.

"Bosnia-Hercegovina looks more and more like a private state. This is how some members of the (tripartite) presidency, deputies, ministries, diplomats and state officials are behaving," the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, told SRNA.

He was referring notably to the acting president of Bosnia's rotating presidency Haris Silajdzic, a Muslim, who on Thursday in London demanded an apology from Britain over Ganic's "mistreatment" following his arrest on March 1.

Silajdzic said he asked British Foreign Secretary David Miliband for an apology during a meeting where they discussed Ganic's arrest on a Serbian extradition request linked to alleged war crimes committed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The 64-year-old Ganic was taken to the prison after he was arrested as he tried to leave Britain from London's Heathrow airport.

On Thursday Ganic, a wartime member of the Bosnian presidency, was granted bail by a British judge on stringent conditions including a night curfew and a promise that he reside at an address in London while the extradition request is examined further.

Radmanovic said that Bosnian Serb representatives in the country's joint institutions would "consider whether and how they will continue to work in the coming days and weeks," according to SRNA.

He estimated that since Ganic's arrest there has been a "dramatic escalation of negative trends to which the tone is given by Muslim political establishment" that is acting "anti-constitutionally and illegally," the Bosnian Serb agency added.

Since the 1992-1995 war Bosnia remains split into two semi-autonomous halves -- the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The two are linked by weak central institutions, including the tripartite presidency, while each has its own government.