Bosnians to elect new leaders in key vote

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnians will vote today in what may be the most important elections since the war here ended 11 years ago — a vote for leaders who will get a chance to run the country without international supervision if they can overcome ethnic divisions.

Since the end of the 1992-95 war, important decisions have been made by an international administrator. Now the administrator's office has announced that it will close next year if newly elected leaders can implement reforms that will take the country closer to joining the European Union.

But stubborn ethnic divisions that led to the years of bloodshed continue to cloud hopes that the country is ready to make it on its own.

Now, as before, during and immediately after the war, the differences are about the future of the country.

Muslim Bosniaks, the largest ethnic group, generally back a united country, as do their Roman Catholic Croat allies. Their ultimate goal is that Bosnia — now divided between a Bosnian-Croat federation and a Serb republic — will join the European Union when its still-fledgling political and economic reforms are completed.

But many Serbs still cling to hopes that their half of the country can secede and become independent.

The election is for a state parliament and the country's three-member presidency representing each of Bosnia's rival ethnic groups: Orthodox Christian Serbs, Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats.

Voters also will elect leaders of the two ministates that have comprised the country since the end of the war — a president and parliament of the Serb republic and a president and parliament of the Bosniak-Croat federation, as well as parliaments of the federation's 10 cantons.

Such a complex political setup was a compromise reached in the peace agreement that ended Bosnia's war. As many as 200,000 people were killed and 1 million were driven from their homes during the conflict.

In the Bosniak-Croat half of the country, two candidates are running for the post of the Bosniak member of the presidency — Sulejman Tihic, from the main Party of Democratic Action, and Haris Silajdzic, the former prime minister. Both advocate a united Bosnia, although Silajdzic more radically demands a dismantling of the ethnic-based territorial division of the country.

The two front-runners in the Serb part of the country appear to be Mladen Bosic, of the long-ruling Serb Democratic Party, and Nebojsa Radmanovic, representing the Union of Independent Social Democrats.