Both the Serbs and the Bosniaks have criticised on Wednesday the international body charged with overseeing Bosnia’s peace for not having the courage to express a clear stance regarding the current quarrel over the name of the Serb region in Bosnia and announcements that it might secede.
The country’s main Bosniak party, the Party for Democratic Action (SDA), announced last week it would challenge the name of Bosnia’s Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS) entity in the Constitutional Court, arguing that it discriminates against the other major ethnic groups living there, the Bosniaks and the Croats.
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The move sparked outrage among Bosnian Serb parties and prompted Russia to ask for a meeting of the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), a body composed of foreign ambassadors overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and the Constitution it contains.
The body also oversees the work of the High Representative, Bosnia’s international administrator, currently Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko.
Challenging the name of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity before the Constitutional Court would be counterproductive and irresponsible, the Peace Implementation Council Steering Board said Tuesday while it also condemned recent rhetoric and actions that question the territorial integrity of Bosnia.
Following the meeting, the PIC Steering Board issued a joint statement from which Russia has distanced itself.
The foreign ambassadors said they recognise the concerns regarding discrimination of constituent peoples and citizens across the country as legitimate, but that the name ‘Republika Srpska’ is enshrined in the Constitution.
However, the body also condemned recent threats with secession as well as requests for a territorial reorganisation of the country.
The Serb member of Bosnia’s Presidency, Milorad Dodik has for years been advocating for the entity to secede. When the SDA announced the RS name initiative, he renewed his secession request and said as soon as the initiative challenging the RS name is submitted to the court, the Republika Srpska Parliament will pass a decision on “independence.”
Meanwhile, a group of Bosnian Croat political parties, the Croat National Council (HNS), issued a Declaration saying it rejects a ruling by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which said the wartime self-declared statelet of Herzeg-Bosna was a ‘‘joint criminal enterprise’. The Council also called for a territorial reorganisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, expressed his dissatisfaction with the PIC communique in a phone conversation from Brussels on Tuesday, saying Russia had called the meeting to discuss only the name initiative and nothing else.
“This is a complete fiasco of the PIC, when considering the fact that the Russians asked for a meeting about one issue, and that, with an arrogant majority of the others some other issues that were not included in the initiative were put on the agenda,” Dodik said, adding that he thinks that this was unfair.
“We are talking about an anti-Dayton approach by the SDA, but, of course, the PIC didn’t have the strength to say that. I didn't expect anything more,” he said.
The SDA, on the other hand, said that the PIC did somewhat understand the situation in the country but that it did not have the strength to say the truth and to take concrete measures their mandate obliges them to.
“Such an approach by the PIC, which is already ongoing for a decade, in which responsibility is artificially and unfairly distributed on ‘three sides’, enabled the maintenance of systemic discrimination of Bosniaks and Croats in the Bosnian RS entity,” the SDA said.
The party said it was “unacceptable” that authorities in the RS set up an atmosphere of “apartheid” which discriminates against members of other constitutional ethnic groups.
“It is unacceptable and irresponsible that the international community is continuously tolerating the existence of a system which is based on breaches of the Constitution and on the idea of ethnic superiority, where the majority Serb people have a privileged status, while others are stripped of their basic rights and exposed to discrimination and humiliation,” the SDA statement said.
The party also referred to the criticism of the HNS Declaration and Dodik’s separatist statements, saying that experience shows that condemnation and expressing concern is not enough “and only encourage destructive forces, which attack the constitutional framework and endanger peace” in the country.
The party expressed concern that the “passivity and indecisiveness” of the OHR and the PIC leaves space for “a new wave of separatist and anti-Dayton activities,” which could lead the country, but also the region, into “a situation of crisis and uncertainty.”
