Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and the member of the country’s tripartite Presidency, said on Monday the Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska (RS) would dismiss the High Representative’s and the Office of High Representative (OHR) Bonn Powers as, according to him, an illegal instrument within the international overseeing of the civilian implementation of the Dayton agreement, Beta news agency reported.
Dodik added that all decisions the High Representatives and the OHR office made based on Bonn Powers should be annulled.
“Some will ask why now? Because it should not be understood that we accepted the violation of the Dayton Agreement (the peace deal that ended the Bosnian 1992-1995 war in December 1995, signed in the US city of Dayton),” Dodik said.
The Peace Implementation Council (PIC comprising countries and agencies supporting the peace process in Bosnia and Herzegovina) agreed in December 1997 in the meeting in Bonn to grant further powers to the OHR, in order to prevent nationalist politicians from delaying or obstructing the implementation of the Dayton Agreement.
The OHR got powers to act when local parties were unable or unwilling to act themselves and to remove from office public officials who disrespect legal commitments or the Dayton Agreement.
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According to Dodik, the history would remember that the High Representatives “tried to shape the political system by cheating and were doing that until RS strongly refused that approach and their model,” he added.
Dodik said “they now try to legalise that,” saying that “all that has been taken away (from RS jurisdiction) and passed onto the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina do not exist in its Constitution.”
“That is a serious problem, and we won’t give up the Constitutional positioning of the RS,” Dodik said.
He announced a special RS Parliament session for November 5, adding it should “provide answers to some challenges, instead of reducing the issue to the Democratic Action Party (SDA, Bosniak’s leading political organisation) declaration.”
That primarily concerns, Dodik says, “the High Representatives’ behaviour and lawlessness and the international crime they committed aiming to impose Bonn Powers on RS outside the Dayton Agreement and use them to change the political system.”
