Bosnian Serb leader: Preserving the peace is priority

Screenshot/VOA

The peace must be preserved while citizens must be given an opportunity to make decisions, said Milorad Dodik, Bosnia's tripartite Presidency Chairman and leader of ethnic Serbs in the country.

Speaking in an interview for the Voice of America, Dodik said there is no chance a war might occur in Bosnia.

“We're not deprived of the stupidity called terrorism but a war, like civil war amongst the peoples here, is not a possibility,” he said.

Preserving the peace is a priority, said Dodik, adding that any “escalation” would be fatal for everyone.

“It is widely misunderstood, my generation has been living in a crisis identified as of 1991. Plus the 20 previous years of Yugoslavia which was in crisis back then,” he said, pointing out that these territories were exposed to the “constant influences” of some kind of a crisis.

Milorad Dodik is the leader of the strongest political party in Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity. In the last year general election, Dodik was elected to represent both the entity and the Serbs in the State Presidency, while his nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) won significant number of votes to enter the State Parliament and other institutions, where the three Bosnia's main ethnic groups, the Bosniaks, the Croats and the Serbs, share power.

Although he has been advocating for the secession of the RS from Bosnia and its independence, the Serb leader says the media in Bosnia's Federation (FBiH), which is shared by the Bosniaks and the Croats, create a wrong image about the RS.

“Stories about the RS working day and night on doing something bad has been created especially in the Federation's media. We, by doing good to RS are doing good to Bosnia and Herzegovina too,” he stressed.