The initiative to dispute the name of Bosnia's Republika Srpska (RS) entity before the Constitutional Court amid the post-election government formation is “irresponsible and counterproductive,” said the Office of the High Representative (OHR), top international institution overseeing the peace implementation in the country.

The statement came after the leading Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), announced a procedure to challenge the name of the Republika Srpska entity before the court. SDA wants the court to tell if the entity name discriminates other ethnic groups rather than the Serbs living on the entity's territory.

Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of two entities, the OHR said, and the Peace Implementation Council continuously expresses its commitment to the basic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an integral, sovereign state that consists of the two entities.

“In that sense, the announcement of the initiative to dispute the name of Republika Srpska before the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina amid the talks on the government formation is irresponsible and counterproductive, and it further undermines the trust among the constituent peoples and their political representatives,” the OHR said.

The international community's High Representative was installed to oversee the civilian part of the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the peace treaty that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Its Peace Implementation Council (PIC)'s Steering Board, which is composed of foreign ambassadors in Bosnia, meets twice a year to assess the progress in this process. Now, the Russian Embassy in Bosnia wants the Council to meet in a special session to discuss SDA's initiative.

The embassy expressed concern over the intention to dispute the name of one of the entities and warned that this process jeopardises the reconciliation and is hard to predict its consequences.

“We found those statements a dangerous attempt to review the peace agreement which undermines the stability in the country and complicates the formation of institutions at all levels,” the embassy said.