Bosnia arrests man with missing copy of peace accords

SARAJEVO: Bosnian police have arrested a man suspected of fraudulently acquiring an original copy of the country's 1990s peace agreement, which was seized from his home, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Zeljko Kuntos was arrested on Tuesday over the appropriated copy of the Dayton peace accords, the deal that ended Bosnia's inter-ethnic civil war in 1995, prosecutor Dragica Tojagic said.
It is unclear how Kuntos obtained the document, she told AFP.
"He had hidden it in his house in Pale, where it was found during the search," Tojagic said, referring to the suspect's hometown near Sarajevo.
Kuntos was being questioned on Wednesday.
According to the Dnevni Avaz newspaper, Kuntos used to work as a driver and bodyguard for a former parliamentary speaker in Bosnia's Serb-run entity, Republika Srpska (RS).
He recently tried to sell the document for 100,000 Bosnian marks (RM251,329), local media reported.
It is unclear whether the document in question belongs to Serbia or Bosnia, as officials in both countries have claimed in recent years that they were not in possession of a certified copy.
The Bosnian original was reported as missing in 2008 and the country received a new copy from Paris, where the agreement was signed by the presidents of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.
The Dayton accords split Bosnia into two semi-independent entities, the RS and a federation dominated by Bosnian Muslims (known as Bosniaks) and ethnic Croats. — AFP