Russia advocates closing OHR office in Bosnia

Sarajevo - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday in Sarajevo that the office of the international representative in Bosnia should be closed or transformed to give local authorities greater decision-making authority. Lavrov in Bosnia on a one-day visit, said at a news conference in Sarajevo that by closing the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the international community would not leave Bosnia but would be prevented from interfering in Bosnia's internal affairs. 'This step is necessary to strengthen Bosnia's statehood. It should be done to allow Bosnians to take independent decisions,' Lavrov said after meeting with Bosnian Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj. The OHR was established soon after the 1992-95 war to oversee the peaceful implementation of the Dayton peace agreement. For a long time, Bosnian Serbs have been calling for closure of the OHR and for the international community to stop interfering in their internal affairs. In this aspiration, they have enjoyed Russian support. The position of Bosnia's Serbs and Russia differ from those of the European Union and the United States. During the talks on constitutional changes last month, the EU and US proposed closing the OHR if Bosnian Serbs accepted the changes, but no progress was made in negotiations on the matter. After the war Bosnia was divided into largely two entities - the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation Bosnia-Herzegovina with weak central institutions. The West has been insisting on strengthening the central institutions at the expense of the two entities. Bosnian Serbs, who make up a third of the country's four million population, rejected such ideas and have threatened a referendum to join their mother state, Serbia. Bosnian Croats also want to have an independent state within Bosnia, while only Bosnian Muslims, who make up half the inhabitants, desire a united Bosnia with strong central government and the OHR to remain.