THE Bosnian Serb army suspended all contacts with Nato-led peacekeepers yesterday as the Dayton peace process plunged deeper into crisis.
The United States announced it was sending Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Richard Holbrooke, godfather of the original deal, back to the Balkans at the weekend to try to get the process back on track.
Nato declined to recognise the Serb army's announcement as it was in the name of its commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, who is indicted by the Hague Tribunal for war crimes.
A Serb army statement said Gen Mladic ordered the suspension of all contacts with Nato until two senior Serb officers and at least six soldiers detained by the mainly-Moslem government as war crimes suspects had been released.
Gen Mladic also banned all Bosnian Serbs from visiting Muslim-Croat territory, the statement said.
The Serbs had already suspended all talks with the Bosnian government in the row over the detentions, which they say breach the Dayton peace accord.
The Bosnian government says Gen Djordje Djukic and Col Aleksa Krsmanovic, detained in unclear circumstances on January 30th, are war criminals and the Hague War Crimes Tribunal is investigating them.
The Serbs said the men were effectively involved in the negotiating process when detained.
In Mostar, where Croat anger at plans to unify the Croat-Muslim town has also posed a threat to the Dayton agreement, the European Union's administrator vowed to press ahead.
"We cannot accept a situation as in Berlin with a wall, a division of the city," Mr Hans Koschnick, a former mayor of the German city of Bremen, said.
World powers piled the pressure on Croatia, patron of the Bosnian Croats, to bully the Croats into accepting the plan. The Italian Foreign Minister, Ms Susanna Agnelli, representing the EU, urged an agreement "acceptable to both sides".
She told a news conference in Zagreb she had won guarantees from Croatian President Franjo Tudjman for the safety of Mr Koschnick, who was trapped in his car for an hour by an angry Croat crowd on Wednesday, and his staff.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, whose words carry particular weight in Zagreb, criticised Dr Tudjman for the riot.