The envoy responsible for overseeing peace implementation in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the war in the 1990s announced on Monday that he is stepping down, bringing an early end to a tenure marked by reform efforts as well as political deadlock and tensions.
Christian Schmidt has "taken the personal decision to conclude his service" as the High Representative for Bosnia after nearly five years, his office said in a statement. The media in the country, however, alleged he was leaving under pressure from the United States.
The German diplomat will stay on until a new envoy is chosen to replace him, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) said.
Schmidt has repeatedly clashed with the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the main politician in the Serb-run half of Bosnia called Republika Srpska. Authorities last August removed Dodik from the post of the president and temporarily banned him from politics for disobeying Schmidt's decisions.
But Dodik's fortunes appear to have shifted as the United States seeks to increase its footprint in the Balkan country.
The pro-Russian Dodik has pushed for the separation of the Serb-run half of Bosnia to join neighboring Serbia. His policies have stoked fears of renewed instability in Bosnia, where ethnic tensions remain high between the country's Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim, Serbs and Croats.
Dodik also had faced U.S. sanctions for his separatism, which were recently lifted. President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., visited his region last month.
German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the U.S. had sought Schmidt's departure for reasons linked to the construction of a U.S.-backed, 1.5-billion-euro ($1.77-billion) gas pipeline to transport U.S. gas from Croatia to Bosnia.
Media in Bosnia also linked his exit to U.S. pressure.
A diplomatic source who did not want to be named told Reuters that Schmidt was leaving under U.S. pressure, but gave no further details.
Dodik frequently travels to Russia and was in Moscow on Saturday for an annual military parade to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
The Office of the High Representative in Bosnia was established in a U.S.-brokered Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war that killed more than 100,000 people and displaced about 2 million.
Despite the involvement of the international community in the first two decades after the war, the last decade has seen a rise of nationalists and renewed calls for secession by Bosnian Serbs.
The envoy has the authority to change laws and replace officials who are seen as obstructing efforts at postwar reconciliation.
Schmidt has imposed changes to the election law to strengthen the integrity of the voting process, but has spent much of his time trying to offset the effects of a Serb secessionist drive.
Schmidt is expected to present a biannual report on Bosnia to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said his report would warn of an impending disintegration of Bosnia and a "dismantling" of the state.
A candidate country for European Union membership, Bosnia has been slow in implementing the necessary reforms due to political and ethnic bickering among nationalist politicians.
The country consists of the Serb entity and a Bosnian-Croat one, which are joined together by a multi-ethnic central government.
