BELGRADE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th April, 2023) The leaders of the Bosnian Serb parties of Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a document on Monday protecting the property of Republika Srpska and allowing its secession from the federation if Sarajevo raises claims to it, Serb co-president of Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik said on Monday.
On March 2, the constitutional court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo blocked the implementation of the law on immovable property of Republika Srpska, thus allowing the rights to the entity's property to be transferred to the central government. As a reaction, the Serbs signed the property protection declaration.
"Republika Srpska and the Serbian people have the right to and deserve to have their own state on this territory ... and Republika Srpska will become a state if they do not negotiate," Dodik told journalists.
The document signed on Monday by the heads of almost all Bosnian Serb parties reads that Republika Srpska will suggest the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina sign an agreement on peaceful secession if Sarajevo continues to exert pressure, which runs counter to the Dayton Peace Agreement.
This is not the first round of tensions linked to the possible secession of Republika Srpska from the Federation of Bosnia in Herzegovina. The United States has more than once imposed sanctions against Republika Srpska's nationalist leader, accusing Dodik of undermining the Dayton Peace Agreement, a document signed in 1995 that put an end to the Bosnian War, one of the brutal armed conflicts having accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia, and establishing the current political structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a federation of the two autonomous entities, namely the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.
In March, the government of Republika Srpska suspended any communication with the diplomatic missions of the US and the United Kingdom, saying the Western countries were interfering in its domestic affairs.
The Bosnian Serbs oppose NATO membership, which runs counter to the policy of Sarajevo. In 2017, the entity's parliament adopted a resolution providing for military neutrality. At the same time, Bosnia and Herzegovina participates in NATO's Partnership for Peace program and has hosted the European Union Peacekeeping Mission (EUFOR Althea) since 2004.
