Territorial integrity and sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina are guaranteed by the Dayton Peace Agreement, while the existence of the country's two entities is entirely dependant on the existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the US Embassy in Sarajevo said on Thursday, commenting on demands to negotiate the status of the Serb-dominated entity along with the Serbian Kosovo region.
Milorad Dodik, the Serb Bosnian leader and member of the State tripartite Presidency suggested to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to discuss the status of Republika Srpska, one of two Bosnia's semi-autonomous entities, together with the status of Kosovo, a region that declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Belgrade disputes to date.
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Dodik has been openly advocating the secession of the Serb-majority region and its possible merging with Serbia in the future.
But, the Embassy of the US, one of the countries signatories of the Dayton Agreement – a treaty which ended the Bosnian 1992-95 war and contains the country's Constitution, underlined that Bosnia's territorial integrity and sovereignty were guaranteed by this document.
“The existence of any of two entities is entirely dependant on the existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the Embassy's Public Relations Office told N1.
The Office of the High Representative (OHR), an international administrator who oversees the civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement, also commented, stressing that the two semi-autonomous entities that form Bosnia do not have the right to secession and they exist only based on the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is internationally recognised state, whose sovereignty and territorial integrity are guaranteed by the General Framework Agreement for Peace, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international law,” the OHR told N1.
As defined by the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia consists of the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation (FBiH) and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entities, while the three major ethnic groups proportionally share the authority at the state level.
