Bosnia's National Anthem Remains Lost for Words

MPs from Bosnia's main parties have dismissed claims that the country - which only got a national anthem 19 years ago under a decision made by the country's international de facto governor - could soon get lyrics to accompany the tune.

"There is really no text at this moment about which representatives of the three peoples in Bosnia could agree. Consequently, there is no text that parliament could support. I think this initiative is condemned to failure," Momcilo Novakovic, an MP from the People's Democratic Movement, said on Tuesday.

He spoke after parliament's constitutional-legal committee passed an initiative for the country to get lyrics for the national anthem to parliament on Monday. The initiative was launched by Sarajevo's cantonal assembly.

Bosnia is one of a few countries in Europe, together with Spain, whose national anthem has no official words.

In 1999, Bosnian authorities adopted the song Intermeco [Interlude] written by Dusan Sestic, a Bosnian composer living in Banja Luka. But they failed to agree on words to go with the anthem.

Barisa Colak, Bosnia's Justice Minister, from the ranks of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, said an agreement on words could emerge in the end. "I am not optimistic but it is not impossible," Colak said on Tuesday.

A parliamentary commission in 2009 accepted lyrics written by Sestic and Benjamin Isovic, which ended with the rousing invocation: "We're going into the future together."

But the text immediately triggered a row in public because it did not mention either of the country's two entities, or its three main ethnic groups, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. The country's state parliament never approved the lines, either.

Semsudin Mehmedovic, an MP from the...