Bosnia on the risk to face international isolation

Bosnia's international administrator warned Bosnian Serbs that they risked jeopardizing future ties with the European Union and faced international isolation if they reject a police reform.

Bosnian Serbs recently rejected plans for a single Bosnian police force, a condition for starting talks this year on an agreement designed to prepare it for European Union membership.

"Think again before it is too late," British diplomat Paddy Ashdown told Bosnian Serb politicians at a news conference. "By rejecting the police reform you dashed this country's hopes for a better future."

Negotiations on the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a first step toward eventually joining the EU, were scheduled to start by the end of the year, if Sarajevo presented plans to unify the police forces of the Bosnian Serb republic and the Bosniak-Croat federation -the last major ethnically divided institutions in the country.

But the Bosnian Serb republic parliament according expressed its opinion and rejected a single police. They object the idea of police crossing over from one ministate into another, fearing this may erase the division of the country which they fought for during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

"All the benefits (of being an EU member state) will not come to Bosnia but to its neighbors," Ashdown said.

The talks on police reform have been going on for months, without tangible results, the AP reports.