The outgoing President of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated part, Milorad Dodik, has refused to meet with Austrian Ambassador Martin Pammer, saying that the Austrian diplomat has been biased in serving his office.

Pammer has, according to the Bosnian Serb leader, “done everything” to prevent cooperation.

“With your biased statements, you have very frequently been outside the framework of good diplomatic behaviour and with that you alienated us from cooperation with a country which we highly respect and with which we would like to cooperate,” the RS President said in a letter to Pammer after the diplomat requested a meeting.

Dodik said Pammer had, with his statements, “gravely interfered” in Bosnia’s internal issues, openly favoring certain “usually Bosniak” policies in the country and depriving Austria of an objective influence in Bosnia.

The RS President wrote that Pammer was recently part of an “unexplainable scandal” in the southern town of Trebinje, accusing him of attacking a group of retirees who did not let him take photos of them and then telling the public he was the one being attacked.

“Did you think about what kind of damage you did to Republika Srpska and the Serb people by creating the made-up story about an assault on a diplomat?” Dodik asked in the letter.

Dodik also criticised Pammer for openly supporting Bosnia’s top international official overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, High Representative Valentin Inzko. The Bosnian Serb leader and his top officials have been accusing Inzko of breaching the Peace Agreement and international law for years.

Dodik wrote that he will “inform Austrian state bodies” of all of this once he takes over the seat of Bosnian Serb member of the country’s tripartite presidency when the October General Election results are implemented.

“I express deep respect toward the state of Austria with which Republika Srpska has good cooperation, despite your efforts, and will continue to have it, especially after your departure,” Dodik concluded.