EU enlargement chief, boycotted by Serbs, urges Bosnia to speed up reforms

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO (Reuters) -European Union enlargement commissioner Marta Kos on Monday urged Bosnia to speed up reforms needed for the Balkan country to progress on its EU integration path, during a visit that has been boycotted by Bosnia's Serb community.

Last year the EU invited Bosnia and Herzegovina to open EU membership negotiations, a decision widely seen as a historic step for a country riven by ethnic rivalries and secessionist threats three decades after the end of a devastating war.

The opening of the talks on full membership is dependent on Bosnia adopting a number of reforms, few of which have been passed since the EU extended its invitation.

The work of the country's institutions has mostly been blocked by its Serb politicians after their separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, was convicted for defying the rulings of an international envoy to Bosnia whose role is to prevent the multi-ethnic country from sliding back into war. Dodik wants to split his part of the country off from the rest of it and join it to Serbia.

Under a peace deal that ended its war in the 1990s, Bosnia was split into two autonomous regions, the Federation shared by the Bosniaks and Croats and the Serb Republic dominated by Serbs, linked via a weak central government.

"We have witnessed renewed challenges with the unconstitutional and secessionist legislation and initiatives adopted in the Republika Srpska (RS) entity," Kos told a news conference.

"I call on all of your political actors to join forces and deliver on your EU path, taking all relevant steps," Kos said on the first day of her three-day visit to Bosnia.

Dodik, the former RS president who was banned from politics for six years but has refused to step down, has called on Serb officials to boycott Kos' address to the state parliament due on Wednesday.

A Russia-backed nationalist who has been sanctioned by the U.S., the U.K. and several European countries - most recently Slovenia - for obstructing the Bosnian peace deal, Dodik has not put forward arguments for the boycott, however.

The EU has committed 6 billion euros ($7 billion) to help the Western Balkans nations form a regional common market and gradually join the European common market, but payments are pending ahead of the implementation of reforms.

Bosnia has already missed out on a 108 million euros tranche due to its failure to pass necessary reform laws and it will likely lose another tranche unless it adopts the EU reform programme by the end of September.($1 = 0.8493 euros)

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic)