Bosnia: The US has written a new constitution transforming Bosnia into a centrally-governed parliamentary democracy for the first time, and is pushing strongly - with European backing - to have the blueprint agreed by Bosnia's rival nationalist leaders within the next fortnight.
The blueprint, obtained by the Guardian, has been developed during seven months of secret talks between US officials and Bosnian politicians.
Leaders of the main eight governing and opposition parties in Bosnia travel to Brussels tomorrow for a weekend of negotiations on the draft which, for the first time since the war ended 10 years ago, would give Bosnia the "normal" trappings of an integrated, non-ethnic parliamentary democracy.
It would have a national parliament with full legislative powers, central government and cabinet enjoying full executive power, and a titular head of state.
If agreed, the deal would, it is hoped, help to undo the bitter legacy of the war and the ethnic pogroms that were its main feature.
"This draft would mean the total transformation of this country," said a senior official in the office of Lord Ashdown, the former British Liberal Democrat leader who is the paramount international authority in Bosnia. "This is very ambitious."
Bosnia has one of the most complicated and wasteful systems of government ever devised. It is split into two ethnic halves, a Bosnian Serb republic and a federation of Muslims and Croats, both with their parliaments and governments. There is then a national parliament, presidency, prime minister and government.
The US blueprint retains the "entity" halves but they are stripped of most of their powers, which are vested in a strong central government sitting in Sarajevo and answerable to a national parliament whose main lower house is to double in size.
Donald Hays, a former US state department official who served for four years in Bosnia as deputy to Lord Ashdown and his predecessor, is the key architect of the plan. "What they [ the Bosnians] are looking at is to make the future government a parliamentary democracy. Until the Brussels meeting, we don't know what they are willing to achieve."
His colleague, Bruce Hitchner, a Boston professor, said the draft entailed scrapping more than half of the constitutional dispensation agreed exactly a decade ago at the three-week conference in Dayton, Ohio, that ended the 42-month Bosnian war. "This is Dayton-plus," said Mr Hitchner. "The changes are astonishing."
If Bosnian leaders agree in Brussels this weekend they will travel to Washington, where the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will preside over a signing ceremony on the new constitution on November 22nd, the anniversary of Dayton. - (Guardian service)