The international community's former High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, on Wednesday openly called for Milorad Dodik, Bosnian Serb leader and the current chairman of the country's tripartite Presidency, to be removed from office.

Schwarz-Schilling said that Dodik is openly violating the country's constitution and laws, and denying the horrific crimes committed during the 1990s war including the Srebrenica genocide.

In an article for the Deutsche Welle (DW) news website, Schwarz-Schilling claims that Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing collapse due to the strengthening of nationalist forces that are working on carving up the country.

If the West continues to be satisfied with its role as an observer, the country will fall apart and that will have grave consequences for the entire Western Balkans, as well as for Europe, said Schwarz-Schilling who was the High Representative in 2006 to 2007 and before that he had served as an international mediator in Bosnia and Herzegovina for ten years.

The greatest danger to Bosnia and Herzegovina's existence are people like Dodik, whom Schwarz-Schilling refers to as an “extreme Serb nationalist.”

He recalled Dodik's open statements that he does not feel like the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina because as far as he is concerned that country doesn't exist, as well as Dodik's blockade of the Council of Ministers being formed by opposing the country's road to NATO.

As a result of Dodik's games, Bosnia and Herzegovina's parliament is not sitting and the country could not choose who would represent it in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and has become a new, unique negative example in all of Europe, Schwarz-Schilling wrote.

He further recalled the insults Dodik hurled at the incumbent German Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Christiane Hohmann whom he accused of “anti-Serb activity” and refused to receive her for a farewell visit.

The former official recalled that Dodik had on several occasions denied historical facts like the war crimes committed in Srebrenica and questioned the country's existence in his public statements.

Dodik has been claiming for a long time that the horrific genocide in Srebrenica did not occur even though the International Tribunal in The Hague confirmed that it did. Now in the office of the presidency, Dodik claims that there was no genocide in Srebrenica which is a provocation not just to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina but to the international community too. In Germany and some other countries, denying crimes is a punishable offence. When will this happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina? When there will be legal consequences and when will a president of this kind be removed? Schwarz-Schilling concluded.