"We have been told explicitly that without full cooperation with the Hague tribunal there can be no further progress as regards integration with the European Union and NATO," Bosnia's Defence Minister Nikola Radovanovic said upon his return from Brussels where he attended a meeting of defence ministers from EU member-countries.
Radovanovic was quoted by Sarajevo's Dnevni Avaz daily as saying that it was uncertain if Bosnia-Herzegovina would be invited to send its representative to the upcoming NATO meeting at all.
The country was already rejected as a potential Partnership for Peace member at NATO's summit in Istanbul in June, the mean reason being the fact that the Bosnian Serb entity failed to do anything to arrest the most wanted war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
Top Bosnian Serb officials expressed great concern over possible sanctions which the international community may use to punish the entity.
Republika Srpska President Dragan Cavic told BH Television 1 last evening that the entity authorities, including the police, were doing all to track down the Hague fugitives and that the success of those efforts should not be linked with any concrete dates such as December 9.
Prime Minister Dragan Mikerevic said that the operation of entity institutions would be threatened if at least some of the fugitives did not surrender by December 9.
Both Cavic and Mikerevic reiterated that there was no evidence that some of the fugitives were hiding on the territory of the Serb entity, however, Britain's Ambassador to Bosnia Ian Cliff, who visited Banja Luka at the time del Ponte was speaking before the UN Security Council, brought their claims into question. Cliff told reporters he did not believe that none of the fugitives were hiding in Republika Srpska.
The Office of the High Representative (OHR) warned that the international community agreed that the Serb authorities had not even provided any information which could help arrest war crimes indictees, let alone taken concrete action.
High Representative Paddy Ashdown previously warned representatives in the Serb parliament that the decision on whether they would take part in discussions on changes to the national constitution next year would depend exclusively on cooperation with the tribunal.
The local media report that one of the possible consequences for Republika Srpska is the abolishment of the entity's interior ministry, which could happen by the end of the year already.
A special commission headed by former Belgian prime minister Wilfried Martens is expected to propose by then a model for the reorganisation of the country's police, which will probably be based on five regional centres and result in the full integration of police forces which are now divided by entity borders.