Ethnic rivalry has flared again in Bosnia ahead of Sunday's local election, fuelling fears its leaders are more intent on splitting the state than healing the scars of its 1992-5 war and joining the European Union.
Bosnians will choose city councils and mayors in the two autonomous regions created under the US-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended the war, and in the northern neutral Brcko district in the Sunday poll.
Analysts say ethnic parties are likely to triumph, with turnout set to be low among a populace tired of rhetoric.
Political hostilities between the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, which co-exist in an uneasy alliance under a weak central government, culminated last month in a series of provocative moves by Muslim and Serb leaders.
Haris Silajdzic, who chairs the country's tripartite presidency and heads one of the two ruling Muslim parties, lobbied hard against the Serb Republic, which he says was "founded on genocide". Some 100,000 people were killed in the former Yugoslav republic's war, most of them Muslims.
Serb Republic prime minister Milorad Dodik has taken steps to establish his region as a de facto separate state, which has earned him strong warnings from Western peace sponsors.
International peace envoy Miroslav Lajcak told the Dnevni Avaz newspaper last week the animosities were weakening the state and blocking its progress towards eventual European Union membership.
"You can't say that you are for Bosnia-Herzegovina and at the same time treat half of the country as an enemy state... You can't say that you respect Bosnia-Herzegovina while doing everything to weaken state institutions," Mr Lajcak was quoted saying in a criticism of Muslim and Serb leaders in turn.
In June, Bosnia signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Union, the first rung on the ladder towards EU membership. But so far, little progress has been made to meet conditions set in the agreement.
Activists from a new multi-ethnic party trying to break the stalemate have been beaten up and threatened by political rivals in recent weeks, dampening already dim hopes it would win power.
Reuters