Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Friday told his ally Serbia he was seriously considering declaring the autonomous republic of Serb independence independent of the rest of Bosnia unless the dispute over property law was resolved.

Dodik's hardline Serbian nationalism and pro-Russian stance have raised fears that Bosnia could once again be divided along ethnic lines more than a quarter of a century after the end of its grinding war.

Dudik said he was seriously considering "a decision to declare independence and secession of the Republika Srpska (Srpska) unless the issue of ownership is resolved."

According to the constitution, the national parliament must adopt a property law that applies throughout Bosnia, but Dudik, the president of the Republika Srpska, says this deprives the Serb region of Bosnia of its right to its lands, rivers and forests.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told a joint news conference with Dudik that Serbia, which was an ally of Bosnian Serbs during the war, considered the peace deal that ended the Bosnian war to be crucial to the country's work.

"We will always support anything that the three peoples that make up it agree on," Vucic said, referring to Bosnian Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosniak Muslims.

The 1995 U.S.-sponsored Dayton Peace Accords ended nearly four years of war in Bosnia in which some 4,100 people were killed by dividing the country into two autonomous regions, the Serb-controlled Republic of Serbia and the union shared by Bosnians and Croats and linked by a weak central government.

"I believe that President (Vucic) has understood our message very clearly and that Serbia, as the guarantor of the Dayton Peace Agreement, must take into account all the important details to preserve that agreement," Dudik said.

During his 25 years in power either as president of the region or as prime minister, Dodik worked to promote the autonomy of the Serb region.

Last December, the parliament of his regional region adopted for the second time a law on immovable property declaring the Republic of Serbia the sole owner of rivers, forests and agricultural land on its territory.

The law was struck down twice by the Bosnian Supreme Court. Legal experts say the problem is not the law, but the region does not have the authority to pass a law that must be adopted by the national parliament.

Last month, Dodik ordered Serbian officials to halt all contacts and communication with the US and UK ambassadors in Bosnia, after they criticized his inflammatory speech.