Bosnian officials should stop with unitarization and secession talks, and start supporting each other so we could start making some progress, Bosnia’s Presidency Chairman and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik told Voice of America.
“There are different ways in which relations between the three constituent peoples in Bosnia could develop. They could spark progress or stagnation, or we could try to reach a basic consensus and a functional agreement which would suit everyone,” Dodik said. “We should end the unitarization and secession talks. It’s only natural that we accept reality and try to make something out of it. Whether this will happen or not, I’m not sure.”
He called on everyone in Bosnia to define their goals for the next five years.
“Let’s say those goals should include the Zenica-Doboj highway and then go further north, let’s also say they include three hydro-power plants and to stop fighting over the Constitution and competencies, let’s go to the Middle East, Russia, China or somewhere in the West, and try to find the money to do this. But, we can’t do that because we need to form the Council of Ministers first,” Dodik said.
According to him, the best thing for Bosnia would be to get the candidate status for the EU as soon as possible.
“This is the time when all of this should be done because the candidate status and opening of the reform chapters demand many difficult decisions from Bosnia,” he noted.
The Bosnian Serb leader also told Voice of America that Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council said to him that Bosnia could fulfil all the technical precondition for the candidate status, but the problem is that many EU member states just do not believe Bosnia can deal with its issues.
Dodik said Bosnia’s primary goal now should be proving to the EU that it will not transfer its problems onto the EU, which will be difficult to do because of the current relations in the country.
Ever since the October general election, Bosnia has been in a deadlock because it was unable to form the State level government and the government in one of its semi-autonomous entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH).
Without the government, Bosnia is unable to continue implementing the necessary reforms so that it would continue its EU path.
