The newly elected Bosniak member of the tripartite presidency urged on Wednesday the Prime Minister of the country's Bosnian Serb part to publicly deny claims her government made in a report to the UN which says he was a war criminal.

Such claims against Sefik Dzaferovic were made repeatedly by Bosnian Serb leaders before and prompted state prosecutors to investigate him and his wartime past. The investigation was dropped.

Dzaferovic wrote an open letter to Zeljka Cvijanovic, the Prime Minister of the Bosnian Serb dominated semi-autonomous region of Republika Srpska (RS), asking her to immediately deny the claims made in the report.

The RS Government regularly sends its own reports to the Security Council to counter the official report Bosnia’s top international official submits every six months about the situation in the country. RS officials claim his report is biased against Bosnian Serbs.

Dzaferovic said in his letter that “although these kinds of reports don’t carry any real or formal significance,” he “has to react,” because the RS Report contains “lies” about him and the “wartime role of a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

The RS Report states that the election of Dzaferovic to the Presidency has “disturbed Serbs, and represents a mockery of the rule of law and reconciliation, having in mind that his links to war crimes committed by the El Mujaheed unit have been proven.”

Dzaferovic demanded that Cvijanovic either retracts the statements within seven days in accordance with defamation laws, or presents evidence, court rulings and confirmed facts proving that he is in any way connected to any criminal act or war crime.

“Your report is riddled with falsehood, theories and shams,” he wrote, reminding that because of the Bosnian Serb campaign against him prosecutors launched an investigation and dropped it for lack of “any basis for a doubt” a crime was committed.

Dzaferovic suggested Cvijanovic should read the numerous verdicts of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and the Court of Justice. Both courts established that the Bosnian Serb forces committed war crimes in Bosnia, including genocide in Srebrenica.

A very small number of perpetrators faced justice “which is why I have announced the establishment of a centre for truth and justice,” Dzaferovic said.

The centre is to help identify crimes and perpetrators and help institutions deal with them, he said.

“Those who not only deny the genocide and the crimes that were proven in court but also glorify them and decorate convicted war criminals are the ones who mock the rule of law and reconciliation,” Dzaferovic wrote.

He added that this is being done by top officials in the RS, “whose army committed the only genocide in Europe since WWII.”

Should Cvijanovic not act in accordance with his demand, Dzaferovic wrote he will file a lawsuit against the RS Government and her personally to the competent court, “where you will have a chance to prove your monstrous statements and theories.”