Bosnian Serb PM-Designate Sees West Backing
"I am convinced that the new government of Republika Srpska (Bosnia's Serb Republic) will get the support of the international community," Mladen Ivanic, a moderate economics professor who was nominated on Saturday, told reporters.
The West, which has supervised and bankrolled Bosnia's peace process since the 1992-5 war, has threatened to cut aid to the Serb Republic if Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party (SDS) entered the government.
Washington, the most vocal opponent of the SDS, has branded it "a criminal organization".
Karadzic, indicted twice by the UN war crimes tribunal for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica, has been banned from public life by the West and party leaders have said he no longer influenced it.
The SDS remained the biggest single party in the Serb Parliament after last month's general poll in the Balkan country and, together with Ivanic's party of Democratic Progress and two more parties, enjoys a 49-seat majority in the 83-seat assembly.
The Muslim-Croat Federation is the other, highly autonomous entity in post-war Bosnia.
Ivanic said it was too early to talk about the composition of the cabinet but had earlier said that a stable government would be impossible without the SDS.
"My firm intention is to respect the electoral will of citizens with the make-up of the new government," he repeated on Monday.
He said he would probably present his cabinet to Parliament, which has to approve it, on January 12.
For the first time since the war, Ivanic said, the government should have Muslim and Croat members in positions of deputy and assistant ministers.
He said he already had a plan on how to tackle a serious economic situation. One priority would be to enhance cooperation with Yugoslavia, a patron of the Bosnian Serbs during and after the war.
(Reuter)