Bosnia will most probably vote against Kosovo’s membership in the international criminal police organisation at the upcoming Interpol General Assembly, Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Crnadak said on Monday.
The meeting will take place in Chile between October 15 and 18.
Bosnia did not support Kosovo's bid to join the organisation in 2018 either.
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“Bosnia and Herzegovina has not recognised Kosovo as an independent country and Kosovo is not a member of the UN, those are the formal legal reasons which are of a technical nature,” Security Minister Dragan Mektic explained for N1 after the previous vote.
“We have not recognised Kosovo and I cannot vote for it entering some international organisations,” he said.
Mektic back then said he also met with Serbia’s Interior Affairs Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic.
Stefanovic told Serbia’s public broadcaster that he had lobbied against Kosovo's bid with numerous officials at the time.
“There is pressure coming from big powers and this is one of the sets of activities by our country. I met with a lot of interior ministers, we explained the position of Serbia, we lobbied, we used multilateral meetings for that,” Stefanovic said.
He also sent a message regarding the upcoming meeting in Chile.
“The final phase of our battle is starting now! We will do all we can so that so-called Kosovo does not achieve its intentions. We will fight to the final vote,” Stefanovic said.
Bosnia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Crnadak said that the stance of the government is well known and remains unchanged. Bosnia only supports Kosovo’s membership in organisations which are named on a list agreed on between Belgrade and Pristina during their negotiations in Brussels or any such organisations they have agreed on elsewhere.
“Since neither is the case here, Bosnia and Herzegovina will not support Kosovo’s membership in Interpol and I think that Bosnia’s delegation will vote and act that way in Chile at this conference,” Crnadak said.
The last time Bosnia and Serbia voted against Kosovo’s membership in Interpol, Pristina raised tariffs to products coming from the two countries by 100 percent.
But according to Bosnia’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, Mirko Sarovic, Pristina only “used that vote to find justification for such a decision.”
“They would have introduced it either way,” he said at the time.
The tariffs hit Bosnia’s economy hard, according to economist Admir Cavalic.
“It has been estimated that we have registered a loss of more than 100 million Bosnian Marks,” he said, adding that exact data will only be available at a later time.
“What is important to point out is that Kosovo is an important market for Bosnia, because we achieve an important foreign trade surplus with the country, he said.
