SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- "I'm not anti-Serb," Slobodan Popovic said. "I'm just trying to be a normal Serb."

The difference is important to Mr. Popovic. He's a senior lawmaker in the parliament of the Serb Republic, one of Bosnia's two "entities" that were put under a very thin federal roof by the 1995 Dayton peace accords. His Social Democrats are Bosnia's only truly multiethnic, countrywide opposition. In Sunday's elections, they are campaigning against a Serb Republic government that nominally is from the same camp -- fellow members of the Socialist International. But Prime Minister Milorad Dodik's specialty is to play the ethnic card. "Dodik aspires to lead all Serbs, not just in Bosnia," Mr. Popovic said, with just a bit of hyperbole. "It reminds me of the way Milosevic took power, by projecting the image of someone who can solve all problems," he told me at a pit stop outside the Serb Republic capital Banja Luka in between campaign appearances.

Problems are plentiful. There are of course the generic ills all transition countries share, such as corruption, ineffective yet overbearing bureaucracies, populist politics and organized crime. But this country is also still grappling with the wounds of the 1992-1995 war, which killed some 200,000 people and drove half the population from their homes. Dayton failed to mediate between those who wanted a strong Bosnia and those who wanted none of it. This year's campaigning has brought the issue to the fore again -- unfortunately at precisely the moment when the international community is winding down its activities. The Office of the High Representative, the top international body in Bosnia, will be phased out by next June while the EU is set to cut is troop levels.

The past months have seen extraordinary acrimony. Immediately after assuming office in February, Mr. Dodik began questioning an agreement on reforming Bosnia's fragmented police forces. Shaking up the police is indispensable for fighting the mob. "We must equip the police to fight organized crime in an organized way," Mr. Popovic says. What's more, establishing an effective and truly national police force is also the last major hurdle for an association agreement with the European Union, a first step on the way to membership. Removing the police from the control of the two entities and putting the central government in charge of law and order, however, would hollow out one of the pillars of nationalist power in the Serb Republic. And Mr. Dodik has made it clear that he would rather risk the EU association agreement than loosen his grip on the security forces.

Serb sectarianism has been fueled by the final status negotiations over Kosovo, which is now part of Serbia. Perhaps in a last-ditch effort to avoid Kosovo's all-but-inevitable independence, Mr. Dodik and Vojislav Kostunica, his counterpart in Serbia, claim this would set a precedent also for the Serb Republic in Bosnia. Their attempted blackmail goes like this: If Kosovo becomes independent against the wishes of Serbia, they would demand the same right for the Serb Republic. This view has of course no basis in international law. The Dayton accords -- also signed by Serbia -- guarantee Bosnia's territorial integrity. That has not stopped Mr. Dodik from threatening an independence referendum for the Serb Republic. He knows of course that his independence bid would never gain international backing. He has therefore left open a back door, saying he is simply expressing the feelings of his constituents. This could allow him to assume a statesmanlike posture after the elections by imposing moderation on his people. Genuine or cynical, the referendum threat shows just how much the Bosnian state depends on power brokers in Belgrade -- and on pressure from the international community.

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Politics is still all about ethnicity here. Bosnia's communities are locked in a zero-sum game where every increase in the powers of the central government, mainly championed by the Bosnian Muslim plurality, is seen as a mortal threat by many Serbs -- and also Croats.

In the old days, that perceived threat was most tangibly embodied by wartime Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. Today, this role is being played by Haris Silajdzic, a charismatic and somewhat mercurial scholar who served as prime minister during the war and is now the frontrunner for the Muslim slot on Bosnia's largely ceremonial three-member presidency. Mr. Silajdzic's popularity among Muslims shot up after his party helped defeat a package of constitutional amendments that would have streamlined Bosnia's complex ethno-federalist system. He was not interested in a "reformulation of the Dayton constitution" but in "real change," he told me at his party headquarters in the heart of Sarajevo's Austro-Hungarian old town. In other words, a Bosnia without entities, a vision that has zero chance of being realized in the foreseeable future. Mr. Silajdzic has no doubt about whom to blame for the current crisis: "The problem is with the other side that insists on ethnic division," he said in a reference to the Bosnian Serbs, "a division built on genocide."

Mr. Silajdzic considers the international phase-out to be premature. But he thinks that the prospect of closer ties with the EU -- perhaps the one goal most Bosnians, whether Serb, Croat or Muslim, really share -- can be used to create a solid constituency for reform. Indeed, it is hard to see any party escaping the pressure of creating a more functional government for Bosnia's citizens -- this is, after all, precisely how the central government got its current powers, which far exceed anything agreed at Dayton. But that process was underwritten -- and pushed through -- by the international community. It's a shame that just as the international statute runs out, the EU also seems to lose its appetite for enlargement. A credible membership offer remains the international community's most powerful tool to prod Bosnians toward a functioning central government. If the EU decides to disengage at this crucial juncture, people like Mr. Popovic will find it that much more difficult to become, or remain, "normal Serbs."

Mr. Vogel is an editor with Transitions Online.