SERB nationalists who want a sovereign Serb state in Bosnia are resurfacing to obstruct the Dayton peace agreement, an international mediator said yesterday.
"What we are seeing certainly is a re emergence of the hardline group, which is disquieting and raises important questions about the Dayton agreement," Mr Colum Murphy, a spokesman for the international High Representative to Bosnia, told a news conference in Sarajevo.
Mr Murphy said the Bosnian Serb leader, Mr Radovan Karadzic was behind a Serb decision to refuse an invitation to attend a post war reconstruction aid conference in Brussels last Friday. The Serbs declined to attend as part of an overall delegation representing Bosnia, saying they should be treated separately.
The Bosnian Serb Prime Minister, Mr Rajko Kasagic, who is considered a pragmatist, agreed last month on a formula for attending the Brussels conference, but Mr Karadzic forced him to renege, according to diplomats.
The letter from Bosnian Serbs refusing the invitation contained language implying that the Serb entity in Bosnia should be treated as a sovereign state. Such a demand clearly violates the Dayton peace accord, which calls for preserving Bosnia Herzegovina as an independent state comprising a Serb entity and a Muslim Croat federation.
"There is something disquieting between the lines of these letters, Mr Murphy told reporters. "They are not saying that explicitly [that Bosnia does not exist]. They are careful to avoid making such a statement, but what we see is that there's an implied desire on their part to be treated as a sovereign entity."
The resurgence of Serb hardliners underlined the need to remove indicted war criminals such as Mr Karadzic from office, Mr Murphy said.
Diplomats said that President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, patron of the Bosnian Serbs, was expected to come under mounting pressure from western governments to make good on his obligations under the peace treaty to force Mr Karadzic to step down. "He has got to go. It's no longer a question of if or when. It has to happen," said one diplomat.