THE leading Western mediator in Bosnia, Mr Carl Bildt, yesterday ruled out co operation with a hardline leader appointed by the Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic.
Dr Karadzic, twice indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, earlier this month dismissed his moderate Prime Minister, Mr Rajko Kasagic.
In his place, he appointed a hardliner, Mr Gojko Klickovic, and delegated some of his own presidential powers to Dr Biljana Plavsic.
"It is obvious that the international community cannot accept contacts with Dr Pavsic in her function as assisting a person who is seeking to hang on to public office in clear violation of the peace agreement," Mr Bildt said in a statement.
Mr Bildt's move is the latest in a battle to force out the isolationist Bosnian Serb leaders, widely seen as the greatest threat to the Dayton peace accord which ended the 43 month war in Bosnia.
Dr Plavsic, who assumed responsibility for contacts with the international community, is a loyal nationalist sharing Dr Karadzic's opposition to ethnic reintegration of Bosnia.
Under the Dayton peace deal signed last December, Dr Karadzic and his military commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, should have stepped down from office months ago and faced the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Dr Karadzic is showing no sign of relenting to international pressure and has managed to sideline all moderates in the north west town of Banja Luka whom Mr Bildt was grooming as an alternative leadership to the hardliners in the Bosnian Serb leader's powerbase at Pale.
Meanwhile, a Bosnian Serb official in Belgrade said yesterday that Muslims had blown up a bridge linking the two entities in Bosnia, the Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) and the MuslimCroat federation.
The Nato led Implementation Force (Ifor) confirmed yesterday that the bridge at Krstac in northeast Bosnia had been blown up and was now impassable.
The mayor of the nearby town of Ugljevik, Mr Miladin Stjepanovic, told the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA that the bridge was in an area where the line between the two entities had been altered in the Serbs' favour.
"It was people unhappy with this, the Muslims, who dynamited the bridge," he said.
No one was injured in the incident and Ifor is carrying out an inquiry.
EU administrator, Mr Ricardo Perez Casado, yesterday announced a new date for elections in the divided southern town of Mostar, saying they would be held on June 30th.
He said that the existing electoral decree would be amended accordingly.
The municipal elections, the first polls in Bosnia since the end of the war, were originally due to take place today. An agreement to delay them was reached last week when Muslim and Croat officials agreed that refugees from the town would be able to take part.
Six mainly Muslim parties had threatened a boycott over the issue.
The EU, which has administered Mostar since 1994, is organising the elections, which are intended to help reunify the town.