U.N. envoy: Serbs cannot ruin Bosnia

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- The U.N. chief envoy to Bosnia said Tuesday nobody will tolerate Serbian bids to undermine the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1991-95 Yugoslav war.

A spokesman for the office of Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the U.N. high representative in Sarajevo, rejected statements by Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik over possible independence for Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Serb RTRS radio-television said.

He noted such action would require a constitutional change, something that would require agreement between Bosnia-Herzegovina's three ethnic enclaves -- Muslim, Serbian and Croat -- and international bodies, the Bosnian Serb SRNA news agency reported.

The U.N. high representative's office was established in 1995 to supervise implementation of the Dayton accords, which ended the Bosnian war and declared Bosnia-Herzegovina a single state made up of two entities, the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croatian federation.

In 1995, NATO had 60,000 troops deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 6,500 peacekeepers from EU countries replaced NATO soldiers in 2004.