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Police and security agencies increased security levels after the attack on a police station in the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik on Monday evening which left one policeman dead and two injured.

The attacker, who was identified as Nerdin Ibric, a Bosniak born in 1991, was also killed in the shootout with police officers.

“For all those who believed that something like this could not happen in Republika Srpska, here, it happened now,” the Interior Minister in the Serb-dominated entity, Dragan Lukac, told media.

Bosnia's main Serbian party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, on Saturday re-elected its leader, Milorad Dodik, at a party congress in Eastern Sarajevo for another four years.

The SNSD also elected other key party bodies and adopted several declarations, setting out its long-term strategic orientation. One called for a referendum for the independence of Bosnia’s Serbian-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, RS, in 2018, unless Bosnia’s political and administrative settlement under the original 1995 Dayton peace accord is restored by then.

The main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, has threatened to block the work of Bosnia’s long-awaited new state government, the Council of Ministers, which is holding its first session on Tuesday. 
 
Following a meeting of the party leadership on Monday, SNSD officials pledged to expand their boycott of state institutions, which is already affecting the work of the state parliament.   
 

Igor Radojicic, a popular figure in the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, is close to resigning – or being kicked out – from the party, which could undermine the political stability of Republika Srpska, a party source told Balkan Insight.

Radojicic is a deputy in the Republika Srpska assembly, is the vice-president of SNSD and heads its Banja Luka branch – the biggest and most important party branch.

Bosnia’s ruling coalition has effectively collapsed after the three main parties in the Federation failed to agree on the makeup of the entity's new government on Sunday. 

This development puts in question the recent agreement on the formation of the new state government, and threatens to push the country deeper into political chaos five months after the elections. 

Talks were held in Sarajevo on Sunday aimed at finding an agreement on how to distribute eight Bosniak, five Croat and three Serb ministerial positions in the new Federation government. 

Four months after Bosnia’s general elections, the leaders of the six parties that make up the ruling coalition at the state level have agreed on the distribution of ministerial and deputy ministerial seats in the new government. 

The Serb Democratic Party, SDS, which came second in the elections in Republika Srpska last month, has offered cabinet positions to the Socialist Party, SP, in a bid to win its favours from the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD.

The SNSD came first in the polls. But both the SNSD and the SDS need the support of smaller parties to help them create a parliamentary majority and form a government in the entity.

The Party of Democratic Action, SDA, based on 86 per cent of counted votes, will likely take the lead position in Bosnia's new state-level government after it won around 28 per cent of the votes in the country's Federation entity - around 233,000 votes in all.

In the other entity, Republika Srpska, with some 229,000 votes, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, has emerged again as the leading party.