BiH Presidency member Milorad Dodik said he was satisfied with the meeting he and his colleagues in the tripartite institutions has with USAID Administrator Samantha Power on Friday, but argued that US officials generally have a “hidden agenda” to centralise Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dodik and his colleagues, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, met with Power amid what many say is the biggest political crisis the country has experienced since the end of the war in the 1990s.
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Dodik said he was glad that Power treats Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous entities, Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of BiH (FBiH), equally and that she is willing to continue supporting projects in the RS.
“We are satisfied with this part of the meeting with the USAID. We remain committed to collaborating on projects that we will jointly select with local communities. We support all projects at the state level of BiH as well,” he said.
Dodik said that the second part of the meeting was on the functioning of BiH and its perspectives.
“She asked me why I think America is being one-sided. I explained that their officials have a hidden agenda here, in which they are trying to centralize BiH to the extent that Dayton (Peace Agreement) solutions are not respected,” he said.
Dodik said that Bosniak Presidency member Sefik Dzaferovic and he were on “opposite sides” during the conversation, while Bosnian Croat member Zeljko Komsic “ignored” that part of the meeting.
“We do not share their idea of BiH, which seeks to derogate from constitutional rights. We remain committed to peace and we will not focus on the status of RS in order to endanger peace. We will continue to respect the BiH Constitution. All reforms so far have been carried out under political violence,” Dodik said.
He argued that the law banning genocide denial which was imposed by the former High Representative of the international community in the country, as well as certain Constitutional Court decisions are examples of this.
Dodik said one of the topics was also emigration from BiH.
“We need to focus on creating conditions for people to stay here,” he said, but argued that the reason for emigration is not only because of the situation in BiH, “but also because of the visible imbalance of the labour force.”
“EU members significantly stimulate the arrival of foreign citizens to whom they give only work permits, not citizenship. And then when they retire or get sick, they come to us here for treatment,” Dodik said.
The Bosnian Serb political leader also said corruption in Bosnia was discussed at the meeting.
Dodik said he asked “who gave permission or invited America to deal with this issue here”, referring to the recent sanctions the US imposed against officials over corruption, which includes himself.
He stressed that he is ready to fight corruption, but that the United States must not interfere in the internal affairs of BiH.
“I have received information that US embassy officials are rummaging through the Prosecutor's Office in order to refute in any way my claim that no proceedings are being conducted against me and to find a prosecutor that can be bought so he files an indictment against Milorad Dodik,” the BiH Presidency member said.
He stressed that “Republika Srpska has no plan to carry out secession or is it going in that direction.”
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