BELGRADE, Mar. 1 (Xinhua) -- Bosnia-Herzegovina marked its Independence Day on Sunday, but lingering ethnic division between the three main nationalities Bosnian Muslim, Croats, and Serbs overshadowed the festive public holiday.

    The Independence Day was celebrated in the Muslim-Croat entity, while the authorities of the other entity -- the Serb Republic -- ignored it just as in previous years.

    In the capital Sarajevo, the Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) members of the country's three-man presidency -- Zeljko Komsic and Haris Silajdzic -- laid wreaths at memorial sites in commemoration of victims of the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war and of the Second World War.

    The Serb member of the Bosnian presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic, did not take party in any commemoration on this occasion.

    The Bosnian Serb leadership also refuses to accept March 1 as a national holiday.

    The Independence Day is in memory of a 1992 referendum at which citizens of the then Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for severing ties with the then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

    The referendum on independence was held on Feb. 29 and March 1, 1992 despite Serbs' boycott. About 65 percent of eligible voters took part in the referendum with 99 percent voting for an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina.