Muslims and Serbs agree to merge Bosnian police force

BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA :Bosnia's Muslim and Serb leaders have finally agreed to merge its ethnically divided police force, just before an EU deadline that would have dashed the country's hopes of signing a key framework deal with the bloc.

However, Bosnia's international peace envoy, Miroslav Lajcak, urged caution over the deal, saying it might not yield the unified police service that would allow the former Yugoslav republic to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, the first step on the road to EU membership.

Haris Silajdzic, the leader of Bosnia's Muslim majority, agreed a protocol on police reform with his Serb counterpart Milorad Dodik, who had long opposed EU demands to merge the police force, saying it would leave Serbs unprotected and lead to the eventual dissolution of Bosnia's Serb-run region.

"This agreement does not answer all questions, but we want the police reform and of course we want to reform Bosnia-Herzegovina," said Mr Silajdzic.

"If we decided otherwise, we would have decided against a European future." The office of Mr Lajcak, who had emphasised the bleak consequences of failing to sign such a deal before yesterday's EU deadline, was studying its details. "We would urge everyone to refrain from interpreting the document, as only the European Commission can give an opinion whether this document is in line with the three principles," said Mr Lajcak's spokesman, referring to Brussels' requirement that the police force be organised at the federal level, financed from a single budget and free of political bias.

The division of Bosnia's police force between Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation has entrenched inter-ethnic suspicions and allowed criminals to escape capture by moving between the regions, where many police cannot even talk to each other because they use different radio systems.