Sarajevo - A second round of talks between Bosnian leaders on a constitutional reform proposed by the West to end a long-lasting blockade of the country concluded Tuesday afternoon with no concrete results, but the parties agreed to continue discussions on Wednesday. The meeting in Sarajevo, mediated by top European Union and US officials, went ahead Tuesday, although all three sides in Bosnia - Serbs, Muslims and Croats - had dismissed the idea of restructuring Bosnia's executive and legislative systems.
"We plan to meet tomorrow at 9 and talk some more, but I don't know anything else," Serb leader Milorad Dodik told Bosnian television RT RS after Tuesday's meeting. He added that the EU and US representatives "wanted to hold some sort of a meeting."
"Democratic Bosnia is damaged and we cannot accept that," the Muslim member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Haris Silajdzic, said after the meeting. Sulejman Tihic, the leader of the biggest Muslim party in Bosnia, said that the proposed solutions "are not enough."
The West is advocating changing the complex Bosnian legislative system, which allows each of the three main ethnic groups - Muslims, Serbs and Croats - to veto bills.
The international community effectively partitioned Bosnia along ethnic lines to end the war in 1995 and established nearly sovereign "entities," the Serb Republic and the Federation Bosnia-Herzegovina of Muslims and Croats.
The system has backfired, as feuding ethnic leaders can seldom agree and continue blocking joint Bosnian institutions.
The proposed package aims to transfer some authority from the separate entities to central legislative and executive institutions and to simplify legislation and governing.
Dodik, the premier of the Serb Republic, said earlier that "almost none of it is acceptable" and that "the Serb Republic decided to reject it."
Bosnian Serbs, backed by Belgrade, see the proposal as a step towards the dissolution of entities and their return to a unitary Bosnia, where they would easily be outvoted by Muslims and Croats.
The Muslims, or Bosniaks, make up about half of the 4 million people in Bosnia, the Serbs one-third and Croats 15 per cent, while the entities they occupy are equal in area.
But the Muslim and ethnic Croat leaders are also not happy with solutions proposed by the West. Silajdzic, blasted them as not radical enough, while the ethnic Croat Dragan Covic described them as "unacceptable."
International officials - Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, US Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn - told Bosnian leaders that a compromise solution was expected of them quickly.
"Politicians in Bosnia should be aware that this is an important moment for the country," Rehn said ahead of Tuesday's meeting, warning that without "constitutional evolution" the country risks remaining outside the EU enlargement process.
In return for the proposed constitutional reform package, Brussels had offered Bosnian leaders a fast-track approach to EU the status of EU membership.
