Reports from the press that the SDS main board is going back on the agreement made by their own negotiators at meetings at Mount Vlasic on police restructuring are disturbing.

If true, the consequences would be disastrous for the RS and for BiH as a whole. It would mean that the SDS has decided to destroy its chances of moving forward to modern Europe.

RS leaders should be in no doubt what is at stake when the European Commission visits BiH next week to assess whether BiH has finally met the conditions to be able start negotiations with the EU on a Stabilisation and Association agreement. Commissioner Rehn repeated only yesterday that it will be extremely difficult for the EU to conclude that "significant progress" on police restructuring has been achieved without a full political agreement in line with all the EU’s principles. And the EU requirements are deadly serious. Croatia knows that. Serbia and Montenegero knows that

So the choice for the RS is stark. This is not an academic exercise: RS politicians hold the future of their people in their hands. If the SDS now blocks police restructuring, and BiH’s future in Europe, the SDS - and in consequence the RS - will find itself utterly friendless and alone. As Serbia and Montenegro moves forward to Europe, the SDS will have opted to move backwards. They will have chosen, not the path to integration and opportunity, but the path to isolation and stagnation.

They will condemn their people - and BiH as a whole - to being prisoners of their past, when they have the chance to embrace a future in modern Europe and all it can offer in terms of jobs, freedom to travel, security and prosperity. The choice is theirs and they will have to bear the consequences of it.