Bosnia risks foreign-aid drought

Reuters - Bosnia's ethnic communities will receive only a trickle of foreign aid to help rebuild their shattered country unless they start complying with the terms of the Dayton peace treaty, British officials said yesterday.

The officials, speaking the day before the start of a London conference, to be attended by foreign ministers and aid agency representatives, to take stock of the year-old Bosnian peace process, said the nation's Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation were badly behind the schedule agreed at Dayton a year ago.

"Those [Bosnian] entities that do not follow those requirements will find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to other areas of implementation," an official said.

The various sides were hampering freedom of movement, the officials added, preventing refugees from returning home, committing human rights abuses, refusing to hand over war criminals and not complying with arms-control reductions.