Bosnian Serb Officials Quit Over Police Reforms

The Bosnian Serb foreign minister, Mladen Ivanic, quit Saturday, saying his party would refuse to bow to international pressure to enact police and defense reforms.

Ivanic’s move came as no surprise after Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Dragan Mikerevic, a member of the same political party, resigned Friday. Both said they were quitting to protest what they called moves against the Republika Srpska’s constitution by Paddy Ashdown, the top international official in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since its 1992-95 war, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been divided into two ministates: the Republika Srpska and a federation of Muslims and Croats. Each has its own army, police and government. They are linked by common state institutions.

“We do not want to take part in a process that would lead to creation of Bosnia without the Serb Republic. This is an attack on us and it is a direct consequence of our opposition to unconstitutional changes,” Ivanic said at a news conference.

On Thursday, Ashdown fired nine Bosnian Serb officials to punish the Republika Srpska for its failure to arrest war crimes fugitives. The Serbs last week again refused to create a unified police force that would put their separate police under state command with forces of the Muslim-Croat federation -- a defiant stand Ashdown says is another piece of deliberate obstruction.

But analysts said the immediate reason for the resignations was a U.S. travel ban imposed on the Party for Democratic Progress, led by Ivanic and Mikerevic, simultaneously with Ashdown’s measures. The travel ban was imposed for Serb officials’ failure to arrest war crimes suspects.