(SARAJEVO) - The top international envoy in Bosnia urged EU nations Wednesday to quickly sign a key pact on closer ties with Sarajevo before further delays dampen pro-European attitudes and undermine stability.

"If we wait too long, then we may lose the momentum we have created with such a huge effort," High Representative Miroslav Lajcak warned.

The pact -- a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) -- would provide Bosnia with access to EU funds to build up its dilapidated infrastructure. It was essentially ironed out and initialled in December.

The delay now is blamed on "technical" problems linked to translating the pact -- a first step for Balkan countries to join the European Union and anchor them after the wars in the 1990s-- into EU and Bosnian languages.

But this has not gone down well in Bosnia.

"It's a fact that people in this part of the world tend to see a conspiracy behind every technical reason," Lajcak told reporters at his offices in the capital Sarajevo.

Fueling those suspicions has been the progress of Bosnia's neighbour Serbia, seen here as a cause of the 1992-1995 war that tore the state apart, which signed an SAA last month and moved ahead in the race to join the EU.

At that time, the EU pledged to sign a pact with Bosnia at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on May 26, but the calendar is again in danger of slipping.

"It is still not clear whether Bosnia-Hercegovina will sign the SAA in May or in June," Lajcak said, warning: "We must not underestimate the importance of the symbolics of the date."

"This country must see that if you do something you are expected to do, then you react and react promptly and in a way that's adequate," he said.

Lajcak said a plan to sign an official English-language version of the text and adopt the others later had met with resistance from some of the 27 EU member nations and was eventually rejected.

But Lajcak added: "There is always a way if there is a will, to make our message clear."

He said Bosnia's initialling of the SAA in December had created a "very positive pro-European momentum" here for a few months.

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