The Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency said on Thursday that he would only support the nomination of a new Council of Ministers (CoM) chairman who supports Bosnia’s next step toward NATO membership.
The new Chairman of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers is expected to be Bosnian Serb Zoran Tegeltija, from the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), whose leader Milorad Dodik is currently the Chairman of Bosnia’s Presidency.
One of Dodik’s predecessors and party colleague Nebojsa Radmanovic sent Bosnia’s NATO membership application to Brussels in 2009, but since then the party changed its mind and is now opposed to the activation of the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), which the Alliance recently greenlighted.
Bosnia’s three constituent groups rotate the position of the head of Bosnia’s government among themselves and the next mandate has to go to the Serbs, precisely to a member of Dodik’s party who would be opposing NATO membership if he would be following his party’s policy.
But the candidate needs the approval of all three Bosnian Presidency members, and Komsic announced the criteria for his vote in favour.
“We expect from the future candidate for Chairman of the Council of Ministers, whose name is already being mentioned publically, to accept everything that has already been decided, not only by Bosnia’s Presidency but also by other state-level institutions,” Bosnian Croat Presidency member Zeljko Komsic told reporters on Thursday, reminding that in 2009 the Presidency already decided Bosnia should head toward membership and that the decision has never been retracted.
Komsic said that it is “not realistic to expect” that the current presidency will support “a person who says already beforehand that he does not want to realise” the presidential decision, Komsic said.
“It does not make sense for us to do that,” he said.
Komsic said he respects the Resolution on Military Neutrality which the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity, has adopted last year, but he also pointed out that the RS does not have competencies to adopt any decisions on foreign policy according to Bosnia’s Constitution.
The State Presidency, part of the Council of Ministers and the Parliament have exclusive competencies for that, he stressed.
“Because of this reason I think that support for the Chairman of the Council of Ministers could be withheld, but we will see,” he concluded.
