According to the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, his Croat colleague in the institution, Zeljko Komsic is together with Bosniak political representatives trying to portray the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) as a source of instability in the region.

Dodik said that Zeljko Komsic, the current Chairman in the BiH Presidency, “did not hide his disappointment” with the election results in Montenegro last year and “never got over” the collapse of the regime of the Montenegrin president, Milo Djukanovic.

He accused Komsic of attacking the Serbian Orthodox Church, which he and Djukanovic “believe is guilty for the Democratic Party of Socialists losing power” in Montenegro.

Komsic recently commented on the controversial enthronement of the head of the SPC in Montenegro, saying that it was a political move and that such a situation may spill over into BiH. He said that Dodik is participating in this “project” which aims to destabilise the region.

Dodik argued that “it did not occur to Komsic to ask whether the great Christian uprising, which took place in Montenegro, was the result of discrimination and endangerment of basic human and religious rights by the regime of Milo Djukanovic, over the largest religious community in the country.”

He pointed out that both Komsic and the leader of Bosnia’s strongest Bosniak ethnic party, Bakir Izetbegovic, have been attacking the SPC recently.

“Everything looks like a well-directed play in which these two were given episodic roles that should suggest that the Serbian Orthodox Church is a source of instability in this area, and then sell that idea to international centres of power,” Dodik said, adding that Komsic’s and Izetbegovic’s statements endanger the good inter-religious dialogue in BiH.

“It is interesting that the Serbian Orthodox Church was attacked by the two people who get most of their votes from mosques,” he said.

“Izetbegovic, a declared Muslim, at least has some such justification for this, but hardly the Croat member of the Presidency, as Komsic presents himself to be,” he said.