The leader of the strongest Bosnian Croat party welcomed on Saturday the recent visit of the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency to Croatia, saying that Zagreb is pushing for Bosnia’s future as an EU member despite the internal divisions that were created because of efforts to turn Bosnia into a unitarian and centralized state.
The head of the Bosnia’s Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) Dragan Covic, said that this idea is “contrary to what was agreed” in Dayton in 1995 where Bosnia’s peace was brokered and that the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, is pointing this out.
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“This is the root of the animosity between political Sarajevo and him,” Covic said.
“I am sure that talks with the Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic can produce good results in the effort for the Bosnian Serb voice to be heard, regardless of who is representing that voice,” Covic told the Bosnian edition of the Croatian daily Vecernji List.
The leader of the HDZ BiH believes that these talks should continue with the same intensity in order to realize what is foreseen in Annexe IV of the Dayton Peace Agreement which contains the country’s Constitution, which is the legitimate representation of all three ethnic groups in the country on all government levels.
“Today we have two representatives of the Bosniak people and one representative of the Serb people in the Presidency,” he said, referring to the Croat member Zeljko Komsic, who was elected thanks to the numerically dominant Bosniaks.
This is something that must change and that is why Dodik’s visit to Zagreb is “welcome and can help us understand each other better and overcome our problems,” Covic said.
He noted that he had many meetings with the leader of the Bosniak Party for Democratic Action (SDA), Bakir Izetbegovic, but that those have not drawn so much attention as the ones he had with Dodik, which can be seen from the statements to media given in Sarajevo which are designed to draw “additional attention to that mythomania.”
“I am speaking to Dodik about all issues that are related to the life and functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its government. Over the past 20 years of our cooperation, we have not talked about the Bosniaks without them being present at the meeting,” Covic said, adding that he will continue to have a professional and correct relationship with Dodik, as well as with Izetbegovic and other representatives.
Covic said he thinks that soon the country’s EU candidate status will have to be put on the table and that means changes of the Constitution and added that the changes will be decided by the country’s constituent people.
“Support from the international institutions can be expected,” Covic said. “I am convinced that the position of the three peoples cannot be ruined or touched, it cannot be eliminated from the institutions. Anyone who would try to act in such a way should know that they would be dissolving Bosnia and Herzegovina with that and I don’t want to take part in it.”
