The leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina's ranking ethnic political parties in agreed Thursday in Sarajevo to try to solve the country's current political crisis and focus on reforms necessary for progress towards the European Union, according to dpa. After more than seven hours discussion, the politicians adopted what they termed the Sarajevo Action Plan, reflecting their goodwill to work seriously to solving of the crisis. According to the agreement, both chambers of Bosnia's state parliament should convene next week to discuss the new Standing Orders of the Parliament, and then open the process of nominating the new prime minister. The chairman of Bosnia's central government, the Council of Ministers, resigned in protest earlier this month after the international administrator in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovak Diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, proposed measures to streamline the decision-making process in the country's central government and parliament. The proposal immediately provoked sharp reactions from Bosnian Serb officials, who accused him of harming Serb interests by giving "Bosnia's other two ethnic peoples - Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats - the chance to outvote Serbs in the government and parliament." Lajcak said he would not change his decision although Bosnian Serb officials, led by the Party of Independent Social-Democrats (SNSD) of the Bosnian Serb Premier Milorad Dodik, threatened to leave the country's central institutions if he refused. The dispute between the international administrator and the Bosnian Serb officials, followed by the resignation of the government, caused a deep political crisis and halted already slow progress in reforms needed for Bosnia's movement towards EU membership. To solve the crisis, the political leaders agreed to continue to work on the Mostar Declaration, signed a month ago in the southern city of Mostar to set a platform for final negotiations on police reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They expressed readiness to offer concrete legal solutions for the new structure of the police, which is set to combine the police forces of Bosnia's two ethnic entities - the Srpska Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation - under one state-level command in the next six months. They said however that the starting point would be to overcome the crisis and elect a new government. The leaders of the country's Bosniak, Serb and Croat parties also agreed to continue talks in a meeting next month in Banja Luka.
