There is no danger of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina but separatist rhetoric of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik is driving the country towards crisis, and the international community needs to give a clear answer, international peace envoy Christian Schmidt said during his recent visit to Washington.
Speaking to The Guardian, Schmidt said the regional leaders persuaded Dodik to suspend his plans to withdraw Bosnia's Serb-majority region Republika Srpska from Bosnia's Armed Forces and to reconstitute the Bosnian Serb forces.
According to him, Dodik got a message that nobody would accept “a way which leads to an increasing potential of political and – hopefully not – military conflict.”
However, Schmidt argued, that Dodik is reaching the point where he cannot go back “without losing face.” He argued that the Serb leader’s separatist rhetoric and his vows to sever the legal and tax system in the Serb-majority region Republika Srpska were driving the country towards a severe crisis.
“My impression is we are very, very close to this point, and this needs a very clear answer from the international community,” he stressed.
Schmidt, who was appointed as the international community's High Representative in BiH earlier this year with a mandate to oversee the peace implementation process, talked during his visit to Washington with the US President's foreign policy team. According to The Guardian, his aides were encouraged that the national security adviser Jake Sullivan made an appearance in the meeting, which was seen as a signal that the Biden administration “would pay closer, higher-level attention to developments in Bosnia.”
“I’m very happy about this because I see that in recent years there was no strategy, because there was the impression not only in the US, but in the European Union, but things would go [peacefully],” Schmidt told The Guardian.
Kakvo je tvoje mišljenje o ovome?
Budi prvi koji će ostaviti komentar!