Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik said that four senior Bosnian Serb officials sanctioned by the US for undermining the peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina are unconcerned by the measures.
Milorad Dodik, president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, criticised the US on Monday for sanctioning four senior officials in the entity for undermining the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Dodik, who was sanctioned by the US himself last year, wrote on Twitter that Washington “believes that by doing this, they can discipline anyone who does not share their views”.
“These sanctions also demonstrate the impotence of a great global power like the United States,” he said, adding that the four officials are “not concerned about these sanctions”.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the four officials on Monday. They include the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Zeljka Cvijanovic, the prime minister of Republika Srpska, Radovan Viskovic, parliament speaker Nenad Stevandic, and justice minister Milos Bukejlovic.
Viskovic also criticised the sanctions. “I consider these sanctions to be hypocritical because myself and other officials in Republika Srpska are committed and act in accordance with the Dayton Peace Agreement,” he said.
The US said the four officials are directly responsible for encouraging the passage of a law that purports to declare the decisions of the Bosnian Constitutional Court inapplicable in the Republika Srpska, thus “obstructing and threatening the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement”.
In June, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska approved two laws, one rendering the decisions of the state-level Constitutional Court invalid in Republika Srpska, the other preventing publication in the entity’s Official Gazette of decisions by Bosnia’s international overseer, the High Representative, effectively rendering them invalid too.
Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US embassy in Sarajevo, described the new legislation as “a brazen attempt to undermine state institutions”.
“The law threatens the stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of BiH [Bosnia and Herzegovina] as well as the country’s prospects for integration into Euro-Atlantic and European institutions, at the expense of the people of BiH,” Miller said.
Both laws were adopted by the Republika Srpska parliament in June, annulled by the High Representative, and then promptly signed into law by Dodik.
The list of people from Bosnia who have already been sanctioned by the US includes the former chief of the Intelligence Security Agency, Osman ‘Osmica’ Mehmedagic, former Federation entity Prime Minister Fadil Novalic, former state-level prosecutor Dijana Kajmakovic and the former president of the Federation entity, Marinko Cavara.
Source : Balkan Insight
