BOSNIA: As Bosnia prepares to celebrate a decade of peace, much of former Yugoslavia anxiously awaits the start of final talks on Kosovo's bid to break free from Belgrade.
Monday will not only be 10 years since the Dayton peace deal was struck, ending a 43-month war that killed 200,000 Bosnians, but also the first day of UN-brokered negotiations on the final status of Serbia's restive, Albanian-dominated province.
The European Union will mark the anniversary of the Dayton accords - which were finally signed on December 14th, 1995, and named after the US air base where the deal was reached - by sanctioning preliminary talks with Bosnia on joining the bloc.
Bosnia is the last former Yugoslav republic to embark on the long road to EU accession, beginning with a so-called stabilisation and association agreement, and it still faces major obstacles to membership that may not be achieved for another decade.
Although violence is now quite rare between Bosnia's Serbs, Muslims and Croats, nationalist politicians still dominate, and inter-ethnic suspicion has not been erased by the unwieldy and expensive system of government created at Dayton.
Urged on by the EU and US, leaders of the three communities are now discussing a radical overhaul of a constitution that divided Bosnia into a Muslim-Croat federation and Serb republic, tenuously held together by weak national institutions and overseen by a high representative.
Paddy Ashdown, who has held the post since 2002, has sacked many officials for corruption and incompetence as he pushed through western-backed reforms.
It took relentless cajoling to win Republika Srpska's agreement to the formation of a multi-ethnic police force, which - after agreement had been reached earlier on a unified army and sales tax system - convinced Brussels to strengthen ties with Bosnia.
Republika Srpska has also failed to convince the UN tribunal in The Hague that Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader accused of grave war crimes, does not spend at least some of his time hiding there.
Primed by $5.1 billion in foreign aid, Bosnia's postwar economy grew rapidly, but is now desperate for another boost, with the average monthly wage just €250 and 40 per cent of its four million people jobless.
Lord Ashdown is realistic but upbeat about the country's progress and prospects.
"Bosnia and Herzegovina has done what many said was impossible even a year ago," he said. "For the country now stands at the gates of Europe . . . but in many cases the really hard part of the reform process - implementation - is only now beginning." For Kosovo, Monday will bring an altogether different challenge.
Almost 6½ years after Nato bombers ended a Serb onslaught against ethnic-Albanian separatists, UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari will open talks with both sides aimed at deciding the final status of the grindingly poor province of two million people.
But although the Albanian majority is set on independence, Belgrade is determined to maintain some hold on a region that is the nation's spiritual heartland.
In private, western diplomats talk resignedly of "conditional independence" for Kosovo, but every potential solution has far-reaching implications.
Analysts fear any unrest could drag in neighbouring Macedonia's restive Albanian minority, as well as Albania proper; and if Macedonia crumbled, they warn, Bulgaria and Greece could lay claim to territory, and the region would implode.
