Envoy: US ready to confront attempts to tear Bosnia apart

A senior U.S. official says Washington remains committed to maintaining peace and stability in Bosnia despite recent challenges by some of its Serb nationalist leaders to the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace agreement

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The United States is paying very close attention to Bosnia's political crisis and has tools it can use against the divisive nationalist leaders in the war-scared, multiethnic Balkan country who would try to “tear it apart,” a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

“Our appeal to leaders (in Bosnia) ... is to rise above their own self-interest and to try to keep in mind the broader interest of their county,” U.S. State Department Counselor Derek Chollet told The Associated Press in an interview.

“If leaders continue on the path toward divisiveness, disintegration, withdrawal from the central institutions, there are tools we have to punish that kind of behavior,” he added, mentioning possible sanctions.

Chollet, who serves as an adviser to the U.S. secretary of state, arrived in Bosnia on Monday for three days of meetings with its top political leaders amid the Balkan country’s worst political crisis since a U.S.-brokered peace deal ended more than 3 1/2 years of bloodshed in 1995.