No one made any unconstitutional or illegal decisions, said Bosnia’s Security Minister Dragan Mektic, commenting the possibility of engaging additional police forces in the territory of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity in addition to the RS police, who would protect the state border against illegal migration.

“The RS and Bosnia’s constitutions will not be violated,” Mektic said.

The Security Minister held a press conference in Banjaluka in order to respond to accusations of violating the territorial integrity of the Serb-dominated, semi-autonomous RS entity and the RS Government’s decision that tasked the entity Interior Ministry to prevent all activities of members of other police forces from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the RS. The Government also “rejected the Security Ministry’s attempts to deploy members of other police forces in the territory of the RS.”

Mektic said that the Bosniak-Croat dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity Government expressed a friendly intent to help protect the state border and that they decided to finance the participation of the FBiH police in border protection activities.

He added that there are 80 members of the RS police engaged in assisting the Border Police whose activities are also financed by the RS Interior Ministry.

Mektic stressed that the “RS Government has invented a problem.”

He added that there are some 2,000 migrants currently residing in Bosnia and that so far, the state institutions recorded some 11,000 migrants who entered and left the country from the beginning of 2018.