Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said on Wednesday that he will insist on the return of the competencies that were over the years transferred from the semi-autonomous Bosnian region of Republika Srpska (RS) to the state level by Bosnia’s foreign administrators and the state Parliament.

Addressing the guests at a reception organised as part of the celebration marking the 27th anniversary of the creation of Republika Srpska on January 9, 1992, Dodik, who now is the Chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, said that Serbs in Bosnia are forced to be part of that country which they do not want.

“We are forced to be there by a process of international negotiations, in the context of an agreement which was massively breached exactly by those who created it,” Dodik said.

The international community representatives in Bosnia, the High Representatives, had been transferring entity competencies to the state level and have in this way, “created an impossible country which has no future, decreasing the chances and the opportunities of Serbs in Republika Srpska to develop autonomously without being obstructed,” he said.

Dodik has been advocating the secession of Republika Srpska for years and has often stated that he would prefer to see it as part of Serbia.

The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement ended Bosnia’s war but divided the country into two regions or entities – one with a Bosnian Serb majority and the other, the Federation (FBiH), shared mainly by Bosniaks and Croats.

In an effort to turn Bosnia into a functional state, many of the competencies were transferred from the entities to the central government which many Serbs see as weakening the autonomy of the sub-state region.

Right after the war, Republika Srpska had, among others, its own army, judicial and tax system. All of that was transferred to the state and Dodik announced that either those competencies prescribed by the peace agreement as well as Bosnia’s constitution will be returned, or the RS will secede.

As newly elected Chairman of Bosnia’s Presidency, he pledged to work on that “in a smart way.”