Izetbegovic rules out Croat entity

"It is a utopia. When it was not possible in 1992 in the then balance of forces, why could it be achieved in 2010?" Izetbegovic said in his interview with the Belgrade-based Politika daily on Monday.

Izetbegovic, who recently won the race for the Bosniak member in the state presidency as the candidate of the Party for Democratic Action (SDA) , did not elaborate his view on this topic.

After the Dayton peace accords stopped the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in late 1995, the country was carved up into two entities: the Croat-Bosniak Federation and the Serb republic. Since then some Croat politicians have been urging the establishment of a Croat entity in fear of Croats being outvoted by Bosniaks, who are the most numerous constituent people in the country.

The SDA official expressed hope in good cooperation with Zeljko Komsic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), who sits in the Bosnian presidency as the Croat representative.

Izetbegovic criticised his predecessor in the presidency, Haris Silajdzic, for hard political attitudes.

He said that the country's accession to the European Union had no alternative, and called on Bosniak, Croat and Serb politicians to work on better future instead igniting quarrels among their respective peoples.