The acts as last move of Bosnian Serbs may hamper Bosnia's progress over much of the 13 years since the end of the war, international peace envoy Miroslav Lajcak was quoted saying on Wednesday.

Lajcak told the Dnevni Avaz newspaper that animosity between the country's two regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, has been weakening the state and blocking its progress towards eventual European Union membership.

Hostile rhetoric has flared up again before the Oct. 5 local election, with Serbs threatening to pull out of a joint power network and obstructing the public broadcaster's work.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has repeatedly threatened the secession of the Serb Republic from Bosnia if the Muslim leaders continued to question the republic's legitimacy.

Dodik had said that the disintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina, torn by internal disputes between its Muslims, Serbs and Croat population, would not be a tragedy.

"I have no emotional attachment to Bosnia-Herzegovina, nor do I love it," he said. "I'm emotionally very attached to the RS and believe it can function," said bosnian Serb Leader Dodik told told Radio Free Europe. 

"You can't say that you are for Bosnia-Herzegovina and at the same time treat a half of the country as an enemy state... You can't say that you respect Bosnia-Herzegovina while doing everything to weaken state institutions," Lajcak.

Bosnian Serbs want to preserve a high degree of regional autonomy at the expense of central state institutions that Bosnia needs for membership talks with the EU, while the Muslims want a more centralised state.

The two autonomous regions, created under the Dayton peace agreement that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war, co-exist in an uneasy alliance under a weak central authority.

Bosnia signed last June the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the first rung on the ladder towards eventual membership of the 27-member bloc.

Hostilities between Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Serb leaders have dominated the Bosnian political scene since the parliamentary election in October 2006.

"I experienced this atmosphere that I see today in relations of (the Muslim capital) Sarajevo and (the Serb capital) Banjaluka twice before," the Slovak diplomat and European Union envoy Lajcak told daily Dnevni Avaz in an interview.

Bosnia is under threat of partition, the mood reminiscent of that in Czechoslovakia and in former Yugoslavia before they were split up, Miroslav Lajcak, the international community's representative in the country was quoted to have said Wednesday.

Lajcak with powers to impose laws and sack politicians seen as obstructing the peace, said he would not interfere in the job of local leaders 13 years after the war ended.

"If someone thinks that he will sit in his political office sending poisoning messages while the international community will do his job, then something is wrong," he said. "How much longer do they plan to hide behind the international community?"

Agencies