Dodik rejects U.S.-backed reform plan

Dodik rejects U.S.-backed reform plan

Republic of Srpska (RS) Prime Minister Milorad Dodik and top Bosnian Muslim leader Haris Silajdžić were invited to Washington this week in an attempt to strong-arm the two rivals into a compromise after months of disagreement.

Key issues are the reform of the constitution and the unification of Bosnia's ethnically divided police forces.

Both are hangovers from the Dayton peace treaty that ended the 1992-95 war by dividing Bosnia into two highly autonomous regions, the Republic of Srpska and the Muslim-Croat federation.

"Silajdžić has agreed with nearly all proposals contained in the document... while Milorad Dodik dismissed all these proposals without exception," said a statement from Silajdžić's office.

Talks were expected to continue until late on Thursday.

The U.S., a major backer of Bosnia's fragile democracy, has tried to intervene before, with no success.

A U.S.-sponsored constitutional reform package failed to win parliament approval last year mainly due to lack of support from Silajdžić's party that refused to back it because it allowed the two regions significant voting powers.

Silajdžić has said that regional voting should be annulled because it would cement ethnic divisions in the Balkan country.

Vexed by the setback, the Republic of Srpska authorities in turn refused to unify their regional police with that of the Muslim-Croat federation, another key EU condition for closer ties with Bosnia.

The U.S. has now revisited the constitutional reform plan and offered to water down regions' voting powers to please the Bosnian Muslim side.

But Dodik immediately dismissed any change to the current status, saying it was a mechanism of protection so that no region could be outvoted in parliament.

"The annulment of the regional voting cannot be accepted," he said in a statement, "nor can the police reform be accepted without a clear positioning of the Republic of Srpska police in that structure."

Dodik said he was ready to compromise on police reform, but insisted the RS police should remain the main security organ in the region even after it has become part of a future unified state force.

Silajdžić wants the Republic of Srpska police to be renamed, instead of keeping the name used by its wartime incarnation, when some of its officers were involved in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims.