Bosnian Croat leader sacked

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnia's top international administrator has fired the Bosnian Croat president and other senior officials.

Ante Jelavic, the Croat member of Bosnia's three-man presidency, has been sacked by Wolfgang Petritsch, the international High Representative in Bosnia, after he threatened to form his own government.

The threat was made on Saturday at a Croat National Assembly where the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) voted to enact self-rule in Croat-dominated parts of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat Federation if Western peace officials failed to withdraw a controversial provisional election rule within 15 days.

Petritsch said the move was punishment for attempting to undermine the constitutional order of Bosnia and one of its autonomous regions -- the Muslim-Croat federation.

"This was not an easy decision for me," said Petritsch. "But there was no way around it."

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Petritsch acted because such a move is in direct contravention of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, and risks shattering the already fragile federation, his office said.

The Dayton Accord, which ended the Bosnian war of 1992-95, divided the former Yugoslav republic into two autonomous entities, a Bosnian Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation, each with its own president, parliament and government.

The federation has from the outset been an uneasy coalition, with hard liners on both sides of the ethnic divide arguing for a further division of the region into Croat and Muslim controlled areas.

Jelavic has been especially strident in his calls for Croat autonomy.

Petritsch said Jelavic and his associates had tried for a long time to undermine the Dayton deal to protect their privileged status.

"They tried to spread fear among Croats in Bosnia," he said.

The sacking of Jelavic was one of the toughest moves yet taken by the peace overseer, who has wide powers to remove anyone he considers an obstacle to the peace process.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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The Dayton Peace Agreement
Republic of Croatia
Republic of Serbia

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