West´s New Reform Plan Key For Bosnia Future

A new Western plan to revive Bosnia´s stalled reforms is a litmus test of local leaders´ readiness to compromise.

A new Western plan to revive Bosnia's stalled reforms is a litmus test of local leaders' readiness to compromise and take the Balkan country to Europe or leave it in isolation, Bosnia's top envoy said on Wednesday.

"Without exaggerating, this is about integration or isolation," said Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, who took up the powerful post of international overseer in July.

"Either the country will succeed in joining Europe together with Serbia and Montenegro or it will stay in isolation, with all accompanying consequences," he added.

Last week, Lajcak offered Bosnian politicians a new proposal on stalled police reform, a key condition for the signing of the first pact towards eventual European Union membership.

But both Muslim and Serb politicians rejected the plan.

Muslims accused Lajcak of giving in to Bosnian Serbs, saying his plan would not unify the existing ethnically separate police forces in the two autonomous entities, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, but only restructure them.

The Serbs, who have blocked the reform for years, in turn said the proposal did not reflect their views on reform and was unconstitutional, without elaborating.

But both groups pledged this week to continue negotiations on the plan, which has not been made public yet.

Lajcak said that leaders representing their ethnic groups were coming out with requests that ignored others' wishes.

"I came here after 3-1/2 years of failed negotiations, and each time the space for consensus is smaller," he said in reply to charges that his plan backed down from the original idea of merging the two forces to promote reconciliation.

He added that his plan included all the parts of previous proposals that had been accepted by all parties.

"This is the lowest possible common platform," Lajcak said, adding that the plan was the last chance for Bosnian leaders to prove that European integration was a priority for them.

"If this fails, there can be no more pretence that Europe is really a priority, and the European Union will have to redefine its stance," he said.

"If this country chooses isolation, the international community will react, will have to react through international financial institutions, investors," Lajcak said.

"I'm not threatening; it's just that each decision carries consequences."