By refusing to meet with Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, the Bosniak and the Croat members of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency have “with their infantile behaviour damaged exactly the same thing they are insisting on and that is Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said their Serb colleague in the Presidency and the current Chairman of the institution, Milorad Dodik, on Tuesday.
Presidency members Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komisic refused to meet with Sergey Lavrov, arguing that he showed disrespect towards Bosnia and its institutions when he met with Dodik separately in a room where no Bosnian flag was displayed.
RELATED NEWS
Dodik told the news agency SRNA that what would require hours for him to explain to Lavrov, his colleagues showed with their non-attendance at the meeting.
“If they thought they were disparaging a world power, they turned out ridiculous both for their people and in the world political scene,” Dodik said.
He called their act a “diplomatic scandal” and said that any objections they had, they could have told the guest directly but that they did not dare to do so.
Lavrov knows very well that Bosnia's Serb-majority semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) entity has its own symbols and that there was no reason for him to complain about something that stems from the Dayton Peace Agreement, Dodik said.
He argued that, if the reason for his two colleagues in the Presidency refusing to meet with Lavrov was the Russian Minister’s opinion that the Office of Bosnia’s international administrator, the High Representative, should be closed down – that is even more scandalous.
“It cannot be that the Foreign Minister of the Rusian Federation is insisting on the internal sovereignty of BiH and two Presidency members are rooting for BiH to remain a protectorate,” he said.
