Stop The Bickering, Major Powers Warn Bosnia’s Quarreling Factions

Two years after halting Europe’s bloodiest war in half a century, the major powers behind the Dayton peace accords warned Bosnia’s quarreling ethnic leaders Tuesday that they no longer will tolerate petty squabbles that have blocked that nation’s reconstruction.

The outside forces, including the United States, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, empowered an international mediator to impose binding decisions on Bosnia’s rival Muslim, Serbian and Croatian parties to speed up the process of rebuilding the country.

The actions taken by Western representatives, who were attending a two-day conference to take stock of the Dayton agreements, reflect growing exasperation with the slow progress in restoring social normality and political institutions to Bosnia, even as billions of dollars continue to pour into the country to subsidize the NATO-led peacekeeping mission and reconstruction campaign.

The Dayton accords call for a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation to coexist within Bosnia’s prewar borders.

But their political leaders continue to bicker over the details of common institutions, including the design of the national flag, the nature of a common currency, the lettering on a passport and the size of license plates.

Carlos Westendorp, the international mediator in charge of Bosnia’s civilian rebuilding, offered a mixed assessment of the two-year effort to bring peace to the Balkans.

He noted the guns have fallen silent, the armies are under control and normal life is returning to Sarajevo.

He also said municipal and regional elections have taken place in an orderly manner with voter turnouts between 70 percent and 80 percent.

Thousands of heavy weapons have been destroyed, and inflammatory radio and television broadcasts, which contributed to much of the ethnic hostility, have been stifled.

But Westendorp acknowledged that opponents of the Dayton accords still are flourishing. He noted that the country still lacks human rights protections, a legal definition of citizenship, laws on foreign investment, customs rules, national political parties and public corporations.

He deplored the failure to get refugees back to their prewar homes and the number of war criminals who remain at large.

He singled out for criticism former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, “whose influence contaminates the entire social, political and economic atmosphere,” as well as other political leaders for pursuing “their narrow selfish interests which stand in the way of realizing many decisions taken to establish an everlasting peace. We cannot and will not tolerate such a situation.”