Bosnian Serbs Give In On Police

The Bosnian Serb parliament on Wednesday accepted the EU's demand for reform of Bosnia's ethnically divided police force, fulfilling the European Union's last condition for an agreement bringing the country closer to membership.

After having wrestled for months with Brussels over the details, the Bosnian Serb Parliament adopted by an overwhelming majority the EU guidelines for the police reform a day before the deadline was due to expire.

"I'm satisfied," Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic said after the assembly's extraordinary session Wednesday night. "Now the Bosnian Serbs are no longer an obstacle on Bosnia's path toward Europe."

The EU has said that without police reform there could be no signing of the Agreement on Stabilization and Association with Bosnia-Herzegovina, which would mark better economic and political ties with the EU.

Bosnian Serbs had refused to accept the EU guidelines for police reform, fearing unification of the ethnically divided police force would erase the country's division into two mini-states — a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation.

The EU had given Bosnian Serb leaders until Thursday to rethink their position and accept the EU's condition. The Muslim-Croat federation had already accepted the guidelines months ago.

Cavic had requested Wednesday's extraordinary session of the Bosnian Serb Parliament and attached to the invitation a draft of the agreement on police reform.

It stated that the Bosnian Serb Parliament was "determined to accept the European standards and principles in regard to the police reform" as laid out by the EU.

Since the 1992-1995 war, the country has been divided into two ethnic-based mini-states — one for Bosnian Serbs and the other shared by Muslim Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats.

Each mini-state has had its own police system, put in place to allay public fears of harassment by officers from other ethnic groups.

By Irena Knezevic