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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -With the top candidates fiercely at odds over Bosn
ia's future, voters cast ballots Sunday in elections likely to further entrench
their nation's ethnic divisions and threaten possible EU entry.
Some 3 million voters in a country uneasily split between Serbs, Bosniaks and Cr
oats are choosing from 8,000 candidates for the central and several regional par
liaments, the Bosnian Serb presidency and the federal presidency.
The postwar deal split the country into two highly autonomous regions â one for the
Serbs and the other shared by the Bosniaks and Croats. The two regions are loose
ly linked by a central government, parliament and a three-member presidency.
But 15 years after the ethnic war sparked by the breakup of Yugoslavia, and desp
ite five postwar elections, the vote is still expected to fall along ethnic line
s.
The campaign has been characterized by harsh rhetoric, with Serbs demanding sece
ssion, Croats calling for the possibility of their own autonomous region and Bos
niaks â Bosnian Muslims â seeking a stronger central government.
The EU has told Bosnia that if it wishes to join it must create a stronger centr
al government, which the country's Serbs vehemently oppose
"People in Bosnia want different things, opposite things, and they elect their r
epresentatives accordingly," said Asim Hadrovic,46 as he left his Sarajevo distr
ict's polling station.
Comments by the top Serb and Bosniak candidates reflected the divide.
Milorad Dodik, the prime minister of the Serb part of Bosnia who is running for
his entity's presidency, spoke scornfully of present-day Bosnia as an "absurd co
untry" that lacks internal compromise.
It would be best if the country fell apart peacefully, he said after voting in h
is home town of Laktasi.
In turn, Haris Silajdzic â who is seeking re-election to the Bosniak seat of the cou
ntry's three-member presidency â criticized both Bosnian Serbs and neighboring Serbi
a, for what he said was their shared goal of breaking up the country.
"Their double game has led to all of this," Silajdzic said in Sarajevo, suggesti
ng that only Serbia's support of Bosnian Serbs has kept their independence drive
alive.
Such rivalries have kept Bosnia's government largely at stalemate. Long and frus
trating EU- and U.S.-led negotiations over constitutional changes to simplify th
e political setup and strengthen the central government were put on ice earlier
this year in hopes that it would be easier to find a compromise after Sunday's e
lections.
But voters appear likely to re-elect the same leaders, setting the stage for ano
ther four years of drift and diminishing the possibility of a path to the EU.
That leaves the nation mired in economic hardship and political uncertainty â and as
a potential jump-off point for Islamic radicalism.
Bosnia is "a weak, decentralized state," noted the U.S. State Department its Cou
ntry Reports on Terrorism 2009 that blames Serb officials for trying to undermin
e federal structures.
The Serb efforts hampered attempts to combat terrorism and terrorist financing,
said the report, leaving Bosnia "vulnerable to exploitation as a potential stagi
ng ground for terrorist operations in Europe."
Political analyst Tanja Topic compared the pre-election campaign to one in 1990,
when communist Yugoslavia had just collapsed and Bosnia split along ethnic line
s over whether it should become part of greater Serbia or be an independent mult
iethnic country.
"So for exactly 20 years we have been spinning around in the same political patt
ern," Topic said.
â
Associated Press writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna.