SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnian legal experts presented on Wednesday a U.S.-backed plan to reform one of the Balkan state’s two autonomous regions, a month after it was warned that its bid to join the European Union would be frozen without constitutional changes.

Bosnia’s Serbs, Muslims and Croats differ over how to change a governing structure enshrined in their 1995 peace treaty dividing it into a Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation with a weak central government in Sarajevo.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The president of Bosnia’s autonomous Muslim-Croat federation and 19 another regional officials were arrested on Friday in an anti-corruption probe that also targeted the offices of the regional government, a spokesman for the state prosecutor said.

The raid on Zivko Budimir’s Sarajevo office and the regional government in the southern town of Mostar is the most high-profile anti-graft operation in Bosnia since independence more than two decades ago.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Police in Bosnia raided the offices of the president and government in one of the country’s two autonomous regions on Friday as part of an anti-corruption probe, the state prosecutor’s office said.

It appeared to be the most high profile raid of its kind since Bosnia seceded from federal Yugoslavia and descended into war in the early 1990s.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Serbia’s nationalist president has implored forgiveness for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, in his deepest apology yet for crimes committed by Serbs in the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia.

“I’m on my knees,” President Tomislav Nikolic told a television interviewer. “I am on my knees and asking for a pardon for Serbia for the crime that was committed in Srebrenica.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Some still recall the roar of caged lions punctuating the long nights during the siege of Sarajevo.

Like the bears and other big cats, they starved to death after the zookeepers who risked their lives to feed them were killed or wounded in the bombardment by Bosnian Serb forces in the first months of the 1992-95 war.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s lawmakers approved a law to cut military pensions on Monday, a key step towards winning funds from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The lawmakers from autonomous Bosniak-Croat federation, which makes Bosnia along with the Serb Republic, approved a law that unifies pension rules for veterans of the 1992-95 war with 56 votes for, 12 against, and 12 abstained.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s bid to join the European Union faces being “frozen” and a planned election next year declared invalid without urgent reform of its constitution, the EU enlargement commissioner said on Thursday.

Eighteen years since the end of Bosnia’s war, the Balkan state continues to wrestle with deep ethnic rivalry that has left it languishing behind its fellow former Yugoslav republics on the long road to EU accession.

SARAJEVO, April 2 (Reuters) – Police are investigating
alleged tax evasion and irregular spending at Bosnia’s sole
alumina plant, majority-owned by troubled Lithuanian lender Ukio
Bankas, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Ukio Bankas is controlled by Vladimir Romanov, owner of
cash-strapped Scottish soccer club Hearts.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – A seven-month power struggle in Bosnia’s autonomous Muslim-Croat federation deepened on Thursday as Bosnian Muslim lawmakers blocked the appointment of a judge to a top court, effectively blocking a government reshuffle.

Political and ethnic rivalry in the Federation, one of two regions in Bosnia along with the Serb Republic, is symptomatic of the complex and unwieldy system of rule in the Balkan country under the peace accords that ended its 1992-95 war.

SARAJEVO, March 20 (Reuters) – Bosnia’s Edin Dzeko hopes to extend his birthday party with a World Cup qualifying win over Greece on Friday that would represent a big step forward for the Balkan country in their bid to reach their first major tournament as an independent nation.

Dzeko, who turned 27 on Sunday, acknowledged the Bosnians would have to be at their best in the cauldron of Zenica stadium to overcome the 2004 European champions, with the two teams leading Group I on 10 pojnts from four games each.