New Bosnia envoy targets crime

Ashdown takes over from Austrian Wolfgang Petritsch

The incoming international peace envoy for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lord Ashdown, has pledged to make the fight against crime and the creation of jobs his top priority.

Speaking to the Bosnian parliament, the former UK Liberal Democrat party leader also urged people in the former Yugoslav republic to vote in forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.

We must cut out the cancer at the heart of Bosnian society: organised crime

Lord Ashdown

Lord Ashdown said he would use his tenure to build on the foundations of his predecessor, Austrian diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch.

As High Representative, Lord Ashdown will have final responsibility for implementing the terms of the Dayton peace accord, which ended the Bosnian civil war in 1995.

The peer, nominated by the European Union for the job, visited Bosnia several times during the war in the early 1990s, and frequently attacked the West for not launching air strikes against the Serbs.

Observers say Lord Ashdown might encounter opposition in his new role from hardline Bosnian Serbs.

Targeting crime

Lord Ashdown told the Bosnian parliament that while nationalism might be receding in Bosnia, crime and corruption threatened the whole country.

Petritsch guided the process of constitutional reform in Bosnia

"Working with you to establish the rule of law will be my first and top priority," he told MPs and dignitaries.

"We must cut out the cancer at the heart of Bosnian society: Organised crime," he said.

Lord Ashdown said the legal system had too often protected the powerful and politically connected in Bosnia, while the failure of the law had deterred foreign investment and harmed economic recovery.

He promised to create better conditions to encourage overseas investment and create local jobs.

"This road is the road of reform. If we have the courage to take it, it will lead us to statehood, prosperity and ultimately to membership of the European Union itself," he said.

Beleaguered Bosnia

Lord Ashdown inherits a Bosnia unlikely to break out into a fresh conflict, but still beleaguered by the problems of a weak central government and a struggling economy.

He will also have to try to deal with the war crimes suspects still believed to be at large in the country, including the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic.

Lord Ashdown will have sweeping powers to carry out his will.

Advised by the peace implementation council, he will be able to dismiss officials who obstruct the completion of the peace process and to impose legislation where necessary.

Bosnia was split under the 1995 Dayton peace treaty into two highly-autonomous entities - a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic, loosely linked through central government

Lord Ashdown said the Dayton peace accords were the floor of the state, not its ceiling.

Correspondents say such comments will raise heckles among Bosnian Serb politicians who want to keep power vested in the two post-war entities.