Bosnian Serbs rejected plans for a single Bosnian police force on Wednesday, underlining ethnic divisions, ignoring Western pressure and eroding hopes for talks this year on closer EU ties.
The Balkan country, still struggling to recover from the 1992-95 war that claimed 200,000 lives, now looks set to remain the only state in the region yet to officially embark on the long road to European Union membership. The European Commission has said it will not recommend the start of EU association talks until Bosnia's leaders agree on a politically unbiased and professional police force with no ethnic divisions.
"The Commission has always insisted on the importance of police reform if Bosnia is to move forward into the EU integration process," a commission spokesman said.
"It is now assessing what can be done next."
Brussels had held open the door to talks this year on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) - the first step to joining the EU - if the police reform was agreed this week.
Serbia and Montenegro may begin such talks in October. But the Bosnian Serb Republic parliament rejected an EU police plan by 56 votes to 10.
The Bosnian Serbs said they would agree to centralised laws and budgets for policing, but opposed policing regions that would straddle the line that has divided the Serb Republic from the Muslim-Croat federation since the war.
"The Republika Srpska National Assembly concludes that talks on police reform should resume, but it rejects any model of police organisation in which local policing regions would cross inter-entity lines," the parliament said. Deputies said abolishing their separate police force would bring the eventual extinction of the Serb Republic.
Bosnia's peace overseer Paddy Ashdown warned Bosnian Serb leaders last week their region faced isolation if they rejected the plan, which would fuse two separate interior ministries.
Ashdown's spokesman said on Tuesday Bosnia's next chance for SAA talks may not appear before 2007.
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