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Croatia Begins Efforts To Stop Dayton Breakdown In Bosnia
ZAGREB, March 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Croatian government has begun diplomatic efforts to try to resolve a crisis in Bosnia brought on by threats from Bosnian Croat nationalists to declare autonomy, Foreign Minister Tonino Picula told the daily Jutarnji List Sunday.
"Our intention was not to present a completed political project, but to broach the subject on how to eliminate a constant source of crisis for the whole region," Picula said, referring to talks he and Prime Minister Ivica Racan held with foreign diplomats in Zagreb on Friday.
"The fact is that five years after it's signing, [the] Dayton [peace agreement] has become an alibi for those who are in the long term working on a division of Bosnia and Herzegovina," he added.
The Dayton accords that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 civil war left the country divided in two semi-independent entities with weak central institutions - the Republika Srpska, or Serb Republic, and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
On March 3rd, Bosnian Croat nationalists proclaimed "temporary autonomy," a move that prompted the region's top mediator Wolfgang Petritsch to sack the Croat representative to Bosnia's tripartite presidency Ante Jelavic.
"We do not accept the idea of Croat autonomy because Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be preserved through such untenable projects," Picula said, adding that Croatia's intention is to help reinforce the part of the Dayton accords that supports Bosnia's integrity.
Picula was to go to Brussels for talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Thursday, the newspaper said.
Drazen Budisa, who heads one of the ruling coalition parties, recently proposed a project to abolish the two Bosnian entities. However, the government has not officially adopted his project, published in a Croatian weekly Wednesday.
The signing of the Dayton Agreement in November 1995 marked the end of three years of bitter civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a former constituent republic of Yugoslavia. It created a multi-ethnic parliamentary democracy.
The U.N. Security Council also appointed a High Representative who is charged with the implementation of the peace agreement and the co-ordination of the various civilian organizations and agencies in Bosnia.
Progress so far has been mixed. The country has been more or less at peace since 1995, and the economy is starting to recover from the disasters of the war. During the communist period, Bosnia was one of the richest regions in Eastern Europe.
But it is still a long way from functioning as one country: suspicion between the two halves, so recently at war, is still high. And Bosnia's neighbors, especially the predominantly Serb Yugoslavia, tend to hinder rather than help its development.
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