Bosnia’s new top envoy to use ‘tools’ to help divided nation

Bosnia's new top international envoy Christian Schmidt said Wednesday he would use the tools at his disposal to make the ethnically-divided country more functional, even as Bosnian Serb leaders rejected his legitimacy.

The former German agriculture minister took over earlier this week as the international community's high representative who oversees civilian aspects of the peace deal that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

Since the end of the war Bosnia has been split into two semi-autonomous halves -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croatia Federation.

The two are linked by weak central institutions while Bosnia's highly complex system of overlapping administrations often leads to deadlock.

Schmidt, who has various executive powers including to impose laws and sack elected officials, told reporters on Wednesday that "we want to help Bosnia and Herzegovina to be... a normal country, a reliable partner".

He added that he wanted to assist it "on the way towards European integration". Bosnia aspires to join the EU but has yet to obtain official candidate status.