Douglas L. McElhaney in Sarajevo and Ambassador Donald Hays in Washington led the U.S. talks with party leaders and the initiative to draft a compromise proposal for constitutional amendments, dubbed the April Package (aprilski paket). Overall, the April Package would have better defined and partly expanded State competences, and streamlined institutions, partly limiting the veto powers of ethnic groups. The amended Constitution would have included: an individual President (with two deputies, one for each constituent people, to rotate every 16 months instead of 8), indirectly elected by the Parliament and with a more ceremonial role; the matters subject to consensus within the Presidency would have been reduced to only a few, including defence; a reinforced Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and the creation of two additional ministries (for agriculture and for technology and the environment) the codification in the Constitution of the competences de facto acquired by the state level in the previous period (defence, security, intelligence); a new category of shared competences between State and entities (taxation, justice and electoral affairs); a specific provision for European integration that would have allowed the State level to assume the necessary competences from the entities ("EU clause"); the codification of the newly-established State-level institutions (Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Prosecutor's Office, High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council and Indirect Tax Authority) an enlargement of Parliament: 87 MPs (instead of 42) in the House of Representatives, including at least 3 "Others" (but "entity voting" would persist, with legislation approved if at least 1/3 of MPs elected from each entity would support it); 21 MPs (instead of 15) in the House of Peoples indirectly elected from the House of Representatives rather than from the entities' Houses of Peoples. The competences of the House of Peoples would also be limited to Vital National Interest veto procedures. At the moment of Parliamentary approval, the constitutional amendments failed by 2 votes, only gathering 26 MPs in favour over 42, instead of the required 42. This was due to the maximalist pre-electoral positions taken by Haris Silajdžić's Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) (wishing to also abolish entity voting) and by the Croatian Democratic Union 1990 splinter party, who felt the proposal did not sufficiently protect the Bosnian Croats. The U.S. would try to rescue the April Package by facilitating further talks in 2007 between Milorad Dodik and Silajdžić, but to no avail. Following the replacement of High