The time has come to close ranks and prove that there is more of those who love Bosnia and Herzegovina, said Bosniak member of the State Presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic, speaking at a solemn ceremony marking Bosnia's Statehood Day on Sunday.
The steps have been made, according to Dzaferovic, towards the country's integration into the European Union and NATO. There is no doubt, he added, the citizens will stand up for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Statehood Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina was marked on Sunday but only in one part of the country, the Federation (FBiH) entity which is shared by two of three major ethnic groups, the Bosniaks and Croats.
Leaders of Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia's entity dominated by the Serbs, dispute the day saying that a decision to establish November 25 as a statehood day was never made.
“This is a holiday observed only by the Bosniaks, and it's a speculative story they are trying to impose on everybody,” said Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, who was the first to take its chairmanship in this term.
Dodik also refused to take part in the solemn ceremony which was organised by the Bosniak and the Croat members of the tripartite Presidency.
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The statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina had recovered during a meeting in Bosnia's town of Mrkonjic Grad on November 25, 1943, said Croat Presidency member, Zeljko Komsic, referring to the meeting when Bosnia was established as one of the Yugoslav's six republics.
“Ethnic exclusivity,” a principle Bosnia and its functioning are grounded on today, was not the spirit of that meeting, Komsic said.
“Councillors of ZAVNOBiH (the Mrkonjic Grad meeting) and all antifascists were part of European and global antifascist movement, which did not fight only the conquerors and domestic traitors but were also part of the authority formed by citizens under war circumstances,” he added.
“They showed us we could live together and not next to each other, as the advocators of consociational experiment tell us to do. We're here to mark the Statehood Day together and not next to each other,” he concluded.
The ceremony held at the state Presidency building in Sarajevo was attended by foreign ambassadors and prominent political and religious figures from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
