Bosnia-Hercegovina is recovering from a devastating three-year war which accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

The 1992-1995 conflict centred on whether Bosnia should stay in the Yugoslav Federation, or whether it should become independent.

It is now an independent state, but under international administration. Its three main ethnic groups are Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Croats and Serbs. The war left Bosnia's infrastructure and economy in tatters. Around two million people - about half the population - were displaced.

It is considered one of the most corruption-prone states in Europe, mainly on account of the legacy of deep ethnic and political divisions left by the 1992-1995 war and by the country's complex administrative framework.

International administration, backed at first by Nato forces and later by a smaller European Union-led peacekeeping force, helped Bosnia to achieve a measure of stability.

But early in 2007 the International Crisis Group, a think tank, warned: "Bosnia remains unready for unguided ownership of its own future - ethnic nationalism remains too strong."

The 1995 Dayton peace accord, which ended the Bosnian war, set up two separate entities; a Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the Bosnian Serb Republic, or Republika Srpska, each with its own president, government, parliament, police and other bodies.

Overarching these entities is a central Bosnian government and rotating presidency. In addition there exists the district of Brcko, a self-governing administrative unit established as a neutral area placed under joint Serb, Croat and Bosniak authority.

Dayton also established the Office of the High Representative (OHR). The Office's representative is the state's ultimate authority, responsible for implementation of Dayton and with the power to ''compel the entity governments to comply with the terms of the peace agreement and the state constitution''.

Critics of Dayton said the entities it created were too close to being states in their own right and that the arrangement reinforced separatism and nationalism at the expense of integration.

Negotiations to amend the existing constitution, established by Dayton in order to strengthen state institutions and transform the country into a non-ethnic parliamentary democracy, have so far failed to make much progress.