Senior EU officials are working behind the scenes to correct a new law in Bosnia-Herzegovina BiH that criminalises denial of the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica after privately concluding it risks reigniting new regional conflict.
Milorad Dodik, the Serbian member of the tripartite BiH leadership, has been accused in recent months of trying to break up the country by withdrawing its Serbian part from state-level institutions.
He has claimed that there is an imbalance of power and that when Valentin Inzko, the outgoing head of Bosnia's office of the high representative, outlawed genocide denial this summer, it was undemocratic and symptomatic of the problem.
Dodik s moves to take back powers have been widely condemned by the international community, which accuses him of leading the region to war, but leaked minutes show that the European commissioner for enlargement, Oliv r V rhelyi, has concluded that Inzko's law is responsible for the current crisis.
During a meeting with the EU delegation to Bosnia, V rhelyi, responsible for strengthening the bloc's relations with BiH, gave his frank assessment that Inzko was to blame for the current political crisis in the country and the delegitimization of the office of the high representative.
While the Inzko amendments could not be disputed from the point of view of the law's substance, the fact that it was imposed on the last day of HR Inzko's mandate had been problematic, the minutes report V rhelyi said at the meeting on 25 November.
It was an important decision, and it should have been based on a thorough debate with everyone on board. V rhelyi, a Hungarian close to his country's rightwing prime minister Viktor Orb n, told his fellow EU officials that the Bosnian Muslim leadership had signalled willingness to resolve this issue through the adoption of a new law that could bring Dodik and the Serbian Republika Srpska entity back into the fold.
The 1994 Dayton peace agreement ended a civil war that cost about 100,000 lives after the reunification of Yugoslavia, including the deaths of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica.
The agreement established a new constitution for BiH, made up of two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, consisting predominantly of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and Republika Srpska. The three-member presidency of Bosnia is held by representatives of those three main ethnic groups.
The Bonn powers of 1997 also grant substantial lawmaking powers to the office of the high representative in charge of implementing the deal. It has the authority to impose decisions or dismiss officials who undermine the post-war ethnic balance and reconciliation efforts.
In July, Inzko, an Austrian diplomat, made genocide denial punishable by up to five years in prison. As part of his reasoning, he cited a refusal by the Bosnian Serb assembly to withdraw decorations awarded to three convicted war criminals.
The minutes reveal that V rhelyi believed there was a way out of the current crisis and that he had sanctioned a special sitting of Republika Srpska's assembly on 10 December, where members backed a resolution supporting the taking back of powers.
He said that the legislation that required to take back powers from the state in the areas of tax administration, judiciary, intelligence and even the national army, in order to create a Serb force, should be postponed for six months to allow time for negotiations.
V rhelyi said dealing with the genocide law was vital in order to get Dodik to recognise Inzko's successor Christian Schmidt of Germany, who said the region is facing its biggest crisis in a quarter of a century.
A European Commission spokeswoman didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.