Linking the road to NATO with integration into the European Union (EU) is detrimental to Bosnia's road to EU, according to the Serb leader and Bosnia's Presidency Chairman Milorad Dodik.

Resolution on military neutrality which Bosnia's Serb-run entity Republika Srpska (RS) adopted in 2017 is an expression of political will of the RS people and its representatives and it obliged all those who respect RS laws, said Dodik, former President of RS and the leader of the ruling party in this entity.

Bosnia consists of two semi-autonomous parts, Republika Srpska and Federation (FBiH), each electing its representatives in the state institutions including the tripartite state Presidency.

Dodik was elected last October along with two other members, a Bosniak and a Croat, being the first in the line to take the rotating chairmanship.

The Serb leader said the decision on military neutrality that the RS entity parliament adopted is binding.

“I do respect that but I also don't obstruct any activity related to the EU road. Linking it to the NATO road goes at the detriment of Bosnia and Herzegovina's EU road,” Dodik said during a Christmas reception he organised in Istocno Sarajevo (East Sarajevo) on Tuesday.

Bosnia's two major ethnic groups, the Bosniaks and the Croats, support the country's Euro-Atlantic integration, while the Serb politicians openly oppose the NATO membership which resulted in a resolution on military neutrality, a document that the RS entity parliament adopted in 2017.

Most Serbian and Bosnian Serb politicians dislike NATO because of the alliance's shelling of Bosnian Serb artillery positions during the 1992-95 Bosnian war and its airstrikes on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

Despite the green light that the NATO foreign ministers gave Bosnia late last year to send the country's first Annual National Programme (ANP), which means a step forward in relations with the alliance, the Serb politicians have not changed their firm stance on this matter.

We must start working, said Dodik, adding that setting conditions at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not good.

“RS counted on obstructions at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I, as a Serb member of the Presidency, am a soldier of RS institutions and the Serb people, and will behave that way,” said Dodik.

“I'm offering a constructive talk, a dialogue and the work in the bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we ask for that now, so that nobody is damaged. Those who interfere with crucial issues form outside don't help a lot,” said Dodik.