Sarajevo - Bosnia is under threat of partition, the mood reminiscent of that in Czechoslovakia and in former Yugoslavia before they were split up, Miroslav Lajcak, the international community's representative in the country was quoted to have said Wednesday.

Persistent tension between the Muslim majority and the Serb minority, each thoroughly dominant in their respective area, has hampered Bosnia's progress over much of the 13 years since the end of the war.

The international community ended the Bosnian war in late 1995 by allowing the Serbs, who had wanted to join their territory with Serbia proper, to retain control over roughly half of Bosnia, while the Muslims and Croats remained in the other part.

"I experienced this atmosphere that I see today in relations of (the Muslim capital) Sarajevo and (the Serb capital) Banjaluka twice before," the Slovak diplomat and European Union envoy Lajcak told daily Dnevni Avaz in an interview.

"The first time it was in the relations between Bratislava and Prague, the second in the relations between (Montenegrin capital) Podgorica and Belgrade. We all now how it ended then," said Lajcak.

Each of the entities, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbian Republic, was conceded a high degree of autonomy, but on a higher level there are shared institutions, which are frequently blocked by one of the rival camps.

Additionally, the EU Special Representative has veto power.

Lajcak criticized the two sides in Bosnia for "hiding behind the international community" and refusing to take responsibility.

"You cannot say you are for Bosnia, while treating half of the country as an enemy state. You cannot say you respect Bosnia, while you work to weaken state institutions and consider your own state as an enemy of the entity which is a part of it," he said.

Tens of thousands of Muslims, Serbs and Croats were killed and many more displaced in brutal ethnic fighting between 1992 and 1995.

Bosnia is not only strained by lingering aspirations of the Serb minority to break away from the common state and join Serbia, but also by similar hopes of the Croat community, mostly settled in the southern part.

Of the 4 million Bosnians, 48 per cent are Muslim, 34 per cent Serbs and 15 per cent Croats. (dpa)