International envoy warns of Bosnia breakup amid tensions

The chief international representative in Bosnia is warning that the war-scarred Balkan nation could face the biggest “existential threat of the post-war period” if the international community does not curb threatened separatist actions by Bosnian Serbs

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The chief international representative in Bosnia is warning that the war-scarred Balkan nation could face the biggest “existential threat of the post-war period” if the international community does not curb threatened separatist actions by Bosnian Serbs.

In a report scheduled for delivery to the U.N. Security Council this week, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt said “the prospects of further division and conflict are very real,” if Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik withdraws Serb troops from the Bosnian army and creates a separate Serb force.

Those moves and other threats, if carried out, would "ultimately undermine the state’s ability to function and carry out its constitutional responsibilities,” Schmidt wrote, according to excerpts of his report carried by Bosnia’s Klix.ba portal.

Schmidt, a senior German diplomat, called Dodik’s threatened actions “tantamount to secession without proclaiming it.” He said they “endanger not only the peace and stability of the country and the region, but – if unanswered by the international community – could lead to the undoing of the agreement" that ended the Bosnian War in 1995.