The arrival of Matthew Palmer, a senior US State Department official in charge of electoral reform in BiH, and Angelina Eichhorst, director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been cancelled, MP Damir Arnaut said Wednesday, adding that the two announced that they would "suspend" the negotiations until further notice.

“I honestly don't understand why the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Democratic Action Party (SDA) were announcing their withdrawal from negotiations this afternoon when representatives of the international community announced that negotiations would be ‘suspended’ and that Palmer / Eichhorst's arrival was ‘cancelled’ and that “this news will be published by the end of the day,” Arnaut said on Twitter.

Palmer and Eichhorst spent three days in BiH in early December. They held talks with government officials, opposition parties and civil society representatives on changes to the Election Law but with no results.

SDP pulls out of talks

The SDP announced they will hold a party meeting Thursday at which they would adopt a conclusion according to which this party would no longer attend negotiations on the BiH Election Law reform that are, according to them, taking place in the middle of the crisis and continuous anti-constitutional and anti-Dayton activities by the ruling majority in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity.

“The continuation of participation in the negotiations would mean for us in the SDP the complicity in creating the illusion of normalcy of the current situation. We believe that the Election Law is an extremely important political issue, but that the protection of the constitutional order is our priority, at the moment. Not wanting to pressure other political actors with our decisions, the SDP does not want to be an accomplice in buying time for secessionist projects to which part of the domestic public and the international community (un)consciously is turning a blind eye,” stated the SDP.