International envoy for Bosnia who clashed with Serb leader to step down

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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Christian Schmidt, the latest envoy tasked with overseeing the ongoing peace implementation in Bosnia following the Balkans war in the 1990s, is stepping down, his office said on Monday.

Schmidt has “taken the personal decision to conclude his service” as the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina after nearly five years, a statement said. The German diplomat will stay on until a new envoy is chosen in to replace him, it added.

Schmidt has repeatedly clashed with the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the main politician in the Serb-run half of Bosnia called Republika Srpska. Authorities last August removed Dodik from the post of the president and temporarily banned him from politics for disobeying Schmidt's decisions.

The pro-Russian Dodik has pushed for the separation of the Serb-run half of Bosnia to join neighboring Serbia. His policies have stoked fears of renewed instability in Bosnia where ethnic tensions remain high between the country's Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim.

Dodik also had faced U.S. sanctions for his separatism which were recently lifted. He frequently travels to Russia and was in Moscow on Saturday for an annual military parade to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

The Office of the High Representative in Bosnia was established in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 ethnic war that killed more than 100,000 people. The envoy has the authority to change laws and replace officials who are seen as obstructing efforts at postwar reconciliation.

A candidate country for European Union membership, Bosnia has been slow in implementing the necessary reforms due to political and ethnic bickering among nationalist politicians. The country consists of the Serb entity and a Bosnian-Croat one, which are joined together by a multi-ethnic central government.