LOCAL PRESS

We are ready to continue the talks as of tomorrow (Danas)

After the last meeting in Brussels, held at the Prime ministerial level on June 23, we made it clear to everyone that we are, as of tomorrow, ready to pick up where we left and continue the talks, but the dynamics of the talks depends not only on us but also on the availability of the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, and unfortunately on the political tactics of Pristina, said the director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric. The process of normalization of relations should be continued. Belgrade wants to talk about property, cultural heritage and many other issues, but that has to be preceded by an agreement on the establishment of the community of Serb municipalities as a guarantee that Serbs will remain in Kosovo-Metohija, Djuric told Danas.

He is sure that the community of Serb municipalities will be formed to suit Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija and to be insurmountable guarantee of their survival and progress. According to him, the institutional links between the community of Serb municipalities and Serbia will be made, while the most important link will be the possibility of the direct financing. Asked whether Belgrade is aware of the content of a legally binding agreement on normalization of relations with Pristina, which was recently announced by the European Parliament Rapporteur for Serbia David McAllister, and which is the responsibility of the Negotiating Framework, Djuric reminded that the EU has the status-neutral stance in regard to Kosovo and Metohija. “The most powerful EU states individually have a different stance and it is no secret that they would like Serbia to recognize the unilaterally proclaimed independence of our southern province, but it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who is responsible, is going to condition Serbia to support Kosovo’s membership in the UN,” said Djuric. “Nobody expected that Pristina would give up its efforts to strengthen its international position, due to the process of normalization of relations. The attempt to enter the UNESCO’s is actually a quiet attempt of infiltration in to the UN system. Belgrade will continue to insist that the question of our cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is to be resolved within the framework of the normalization process” said Djuric. Belgrade does not believe Pristina has the administrative capacities or sincere intention to bring to justice perpetrators of horrendous crimes of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), said Director of the Office for Kosovo-Metohija (KiM) Marko Djuric.

Commenting on the announced establishment of a specialist court for KLA crimes, Djuric said:

“I think we would have had much firmer guarantees that justice would be served had these crimes been in the jurisdiction of the court backed by the UN Security Council. Nevertheless, we will seize any opportunity to punish the criminals, as that is in our interest.”

Schwendiman Chief Prosecutor of new special court (Kosovapres)

US lawyer David Schwendiman will be the Chief Prosecutor of the new special war crimes court for members of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Pristina-based news agency Kosovapres reported. As of August 2014, Schwendiman has been the lead prosecutor of the European Union’s Special Investigative Task Force on Kosovo, whose mandate is to conduct an independent criminal investigation into the war crime and organized crime allegations contained in the CoE report of January 2011 by Senator Dick Marty, he has excellent knowledge of the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, and he has also participated in war crimes investigations in many world areas, the agency said. From 2006 to 2009, Prosecutor Schwendiman served as an international prosecutor in the Special Department for War Crimes of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). In this role, he investigated and prosecuted war crimes committed during the 1992-95 conflict. From late 2007 until the end of 2009, he was one of four Deputy Chief Prosecutors of B&H and oversaw the Special Department for War Crimes.

Citizens want Ivanovic to be released pending trial (Tanjug)

Several hundred citizens gathered in Kosovska Mitrovica on Monday demanding Oliver Ivanovic, the Head of the Citizens Initiative Freedom, Democracy, Justice (SDP), to be released pending trial immediately. The half an hour-long protest was held in front of the building of the Basic Court in Kosovska Mitrovica where the regional central office of EULEX is located as well. The protestors hung a sign on the court’s gate reading “EULEX’s court a dungeon”. We request immediate release and expect Gabriele Meucci (Head of EULEX) to act accordingly. We implore our leader to endure because we are all with him – the citizens of Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia, Republika Srpska, Croatia and Macedonia who all sent letters of support, said the head deputy of the Citizens Initiative SDP Ksenija Bozovic. Ivanovic commenced a hunger strike on Friday at the Kosovska Mitrovica prison following EULEX’s Basic Prosecution Office’s decision to prolong his detention by two months until October 6. Ivanovic was arrested on January 27 with charges of committing war crimes against civilians on April 14, 1999 and February 3, 2000 and of encouraging the aggravated murder of a number of ethnic Albanians in Kosovska Mitrovica. His case is related to four other Serbs.

Vatican could be asked to help prevent Kosovo’s UNESCO bid (Politika, Vecernje Novosti)

The Vatican has in the past shown “appropriate responsibility” when it comes to concerns over the fate of Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija. This is what Serbia’s UNESCO ambassador Darko Tanaskovic told the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti, adding, “It would of course be very valuable if they shared that concern as actively as possible with Catholics around the world.”

Tanaskovic was asked whether the Catholic Church “could stand in defense of the Serb (Orthodox) heritage in Kosovo and Metohija as Christian heritage.” All this comes after announcements that authorities in Pristina planned to apply for Kosovo’s membership in UNESCO – something Belgrade strongly opposes. According to Tanaskovic, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) “is in constructive dialogue with the Holy See.” He thinks the SPC “could make significant contribution to strengthening awareness, both among the political public and decision-makers in some countries, that it would be unacceptable to admit to UNESCO those who are objective perpetrators of the desecration and destruction of Serb medieval monuments in Kosovo and Metohija.” Asked to comment on a statement by Petrit Selimi, a deputy minister in the Pristina institutions, who said that Kosovo’s membership in UNESCO would “only serve to improve the position of the Serb heritage in Kosovo,” Tanaskovic said this was “one of the main arguments that advocates of Kosovo’s admission have been using in the international community.”

“We don’t have any reason at all to believe them. Our people don’t need to be told why. However, the reasons for our deep mistrust must be explained persistently and with arguments to foreigners,” Tanaskovic concluded. Earlier, SPC Bishop Irinej of Backa stated that the Church “will heed the call of Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic and join the diplomatic effort to prevent a possible admission of Kosovo to UNESCO by seeking the support of all sister Orthodox churches in the world, but also the Vatican.” Irinej told Belgrade-based daily Politika that Dacic saw Kosovo’s “sly intention of appropriating Serbian Orthodox religious and cultural heritage.”

“I think that our government should include in the negotiating team representatives of the SPC, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Matica Srpska, the Serbian Diaspora and perhaps a few others, but as authentic participants, not just mere consultants,” said the bishop, who is also the SPC spokesperson. He pointed out that the SPC should also turn to the Vatican, which does not recognize the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo made in 2008 by ethnic Albanians, although, as he put it, “this may cause hysteria, especially among ‘iron-Serbs’ and “super-Orthodox believers’ and especially those who never set foot on the martyred ground of Kosovo and Metohija, never defended it, neither with the gun nor with the pen; some of them, moreover, betrayed it.”

DS leader says authors of threatening graffiti “known” (Blic)

Bojan Pajtic has said that those who wrote the “Death to Pajtic” graffiti in Novi Sad “are known,” and accused the police of not preventing them. The police will also not arrest “regime bots” as they had not arrested those who have been putting up posters with the same content over the past year, leader of the Democratic Party (DS) and head of the provincial government in Vojvodina has told the Belgrade-based daily Blic. He added that there are “pictures on Twitter of these activities and of the people who carried them out.” Pajtic, whose party is in power in the province but in opposition in the national assembly, said he was “not worried for himself,” but that he was “really worried” after what he described as “(ruling) SNS (party) bots” threatened on social networks to “slaughter his family.”

“Because I am aware of what people who are leading Serbia are capable of. Until yesterday they only wrote, ‘Pajtic Thief’ on the sidewalks around the school my children attend, but that was not enough,” he said, and added: “The reason for this campaign is clear – they know that unlike those who are leading Serbia I am a professional with a calling, and they are trying with all their might to force me to leave politics and dedicate myself to a career of a university professor. Or at least, to stop criticizing the catastrophically bad authorities. Because if there were no DS, there would be no alternative. Whether somebody likes it or not, that’s how it is.”

REGIONAL PRESS

Emerique Choprad: RS has the right to a referendum on B&H judiciary (Srna)

Emerique Choprad, a member of the European Parliament, says that the current political offensive against Republika Srpska (RS) and attempts to prevent a referendum on the Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) Court and Prosecutor’s Office are but another proof of irresponsibility of the IC which is trying to deny rights to citizens for the sake of another humiliation of RS, as was the Resolution on Srebrenica in the UN. “I think that the people of RS have the right to decide their fate and I might add that this people have a great role as the people who defended the real European values throughout the history,” Choprad told Srna. He said that political decisions of particular importance, such as the judiciary, should be available to citizens by way of a referendum, which is the right of RS’s citizens and in addition to this, it is not in violation of the B&H Constitution according to the criteria of the Council of Europe. “In my opinion, it is highly worrying that the B&H Prosecutor’s Office rejected to investigate documents on crimes against civilians and soldiers committed by mujahedeen who incriminate numerous officials of the B&H Army and the SDA. In a state where there is a rule of law, Federation of B&H Vice-President Mirsad Kebo would not have been forced to seek aid from ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz for enormous political pressure on the judicial institutions. In addition to this, he and witnesses should be protected,” Choprad said. He noted that the analyses of the Strategic Studies Institute and the America War College confirm that the engagement of radical Islamists in B&H has a specific dimension since it is closely tied to some of the leading people in the country.“The failure to prosecute crimes committed by El Mujahidin Division against Serbs, but also against Croats, and a halt in the prosecution of Naser Oric for the events in the area of Srebrenica where 39 Serbian villages were devastated, are worrying indicators of discrimination where a referendum such as this is not only acceptable but necessary,” Choprad told Srna. Regarding the fact that the B&H Court and Prosecutor’s Office are not stipulated by the B&H Constitution and that these institutions have been imposed by the decisions of the high representative, Choprad said that the high representative, who is a non-elected political authority, cannot bring executive decisions. “The figure of the high representative was created to mediate between the three sides, he is not and cannot be a legislator,” says Choprad, a member of the European Parliament from the French National Front. Commenting on strong reactions from western officials and certain EU representatives to the announcement of a referendum, which is one of the most important forms of expression of citizens’ will in the whole world, Choprad said that the US and its allies at any cost want to reduce the presence and influence of Russia in all spheres, and that in this case a strong RS means a greater presence of Russia in the Balkans, which is why all this attention is directed at the referendum. According to him, B&H is a western protectorate which they want to centralize for the same reasons, even though such centralization is quite contrary to key regulations of the Dayton Peace Agreement.

“We are often witness to the way Euroatlantists are violating international law, conventions and using UN resolutions for the sake of political instrumentalisation, we are witnesses to a Europe which is nothing more but a US puppet which is an accomplice in this ‘cold war’ against Russia, which is inflicting a huge damage on it,” Choprad said. He noted that since Dayton, the area of B&H has been exposed to deceptions by western powers, that all implemented reforms lead to a centralization of B&H, which resulted that RS was left without its intelligence service, customs, fiscal independence, even without its major pillar – army. “However, a new group in the European Parliament to which I belong – Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENL) is committed to national and economic interests of certain states and their right to sovereignty, to a proper democracy against imperialistic and interventionist policy of Euroatlantists,” Choprad said, noting that the support of Russia gives the Serbs an opportunity to play an extremely important role as a mediator between “a new Europe of nations and Russia.”

Jerlagic: Vucic’s proposal yet another provocation (Oslobodjenje)

Amer Jerlagic, President of the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), believes that Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s proposal to create a common memorial day for victims, as he said, of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia is yet another in a series of provocations and falsifications produced by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in the document SANU II. “Vucic is trying to relativize and falsify, according to the recipe in that hegemonistic and nationalistic document, every event in which Serbia was the main actor during the 1990s,” said Jerlagic in a statement. He pointed out that the aggression on B&H resulted in genocide on the territory­ and therefore the false proposal by the Serbian PM is unacceptable. “Things must go back to the beginning where Serbia must make a sincere apology for the genocide committed against the Bosniaks. All other offers from Belgrade, as well as the naïve behavior of certain leaders in Sarajevo, offer no long-term solutions. There is no reconciliation without sincere repentance for the genocide, nor joint memorial days for victims, and such an offer is not an option,” the SB&H President believes.

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Bosnia’s survivors gather and grieve as the soil endlessly gives up its dead (Guardian, byEd Vulliamy)

Ed Vulliamy returns to Omarska to hear the human stories behind the horror of a country that is left covered with mass graves after the brutal wars of the 1990s

The dust has settled after being kicked up by crowds converging last month on Srebrenica, the site of Europe’s worst massacre since the Third Reich. But the unhealed pain remains and is repeated across this country as survivors and bereaved families gather, during this sweltering summer season of commemorations, at Bosnia’s hundreds of other mass graves. And the search continues for thousands still buried in Bosnia’s soil more than 20 years on – 1,000 from Srebrenica and an estimated 7,000 others, whose remains horribly appear, gradually, every so often. So solemnities are also held in scores of other places with names barely known beyond the Balkans: two days after Srebrenica, at Vlasenica, where hundreds were killed and all Muslims “ethnically cleansed”; later this month on Mount Vlasic, where 250 were killed while being deported; last May in Visegrad, where Bosniak Muslims were murdered by the truckload on a beautiful bridge and burned alive in locked houses; last month at Biljani Gornji, 200 more were found in two mass graves … the list is endless.

The president of the camp prisoners association for the Sanski Most area, Nihad Kljucanin, told a crowd gathered on the mountainside beside another mass grave at Hrastova Glavica last Wednesday: “If we find them all, which we must one day, the map of our land is covered with graves.” A convoy of cars had climbed the dusty mountain track to this lonely grave, where 124 bodies had been found in 2010 at the bottom of a crevice between the rocks. None was intended to live to tell the tale, but one did: Ibrahim Ferhatic, who escaped. The 125 prisoners – inmates of the infamous Omarska and Keraterm concentration camps – were forced to board buses off which they were taken in bound groups of three and shot individually, their bodies slotted into the narrow ravine. Commemorations in the area around Prijedor, where the camps were located, continued that Wednesday night with an occupation of the site of one of them, Trnopolje, at which tens of thousands of civilians were concentrated – many beaten and raped – prior to enforced deportation. It was here the famous picture was taken of prisoner Fikret Alic behind the camp’s barbed-wire fencing. Survivors returned to hear discussions, and among the organizers were – for the first time – a handful of young Serbs trying to break the silence of their parents’ generation’s complicity in the slaughter. One of them, Goran Zoric, said: “What we are doing is only small, but we hope it is a crack in the wall.” Speaking on land where his family was interned, Refik Hodzic of the International Centre for Transitional Justice accused politicians from all parties of festering ethnic hatreds in order to retain lucrative office while Bosnia privatizes and sells off resources, igniting protests last year and continuing into last week in Sarajevo. “There’s a connection between economic robbery and the trauma of the past,” he said. “Poisonous cynics are making money by undermining our attempts to bring peace. This is hatred as a smokescreen for robbery.” On Thursday morning, a convoy of hundreds of cars wound its way back to the site of the horrific Omarska camp, now restored to its role as an iron ore mine after being bought by the Arcelor Mittal steel behemoth. On past occasions, survivors were allowed to visit rooms in which they were crammed and their friends taken out for torture and killing – now equipped with desks and computers – but were barred this year. Doors to rooms in which women were serially raped were taped shut so that flowers usually left inside were attached instead to doorknobs. But the customary gathering was permitted on the tarmac where men were once beaten and shot to death, and around the “White House”, used for mass killing, white balloons were released, each bearing a victim’s name. Calls were made – as they have been for 10 years – for the Mittal company to ensure a monument to the dead in face of opposition from local Bosnian Serb authorities, and women held a black banner on which was written: “Silence is Complicity” – referring to those who remain missing in the ground. Back at Trnopolje on Wednesday night was Tesma Elezovic, with her husband and son from Australia, where they went as refugees. Elezovic came here in 1992 from Omarska, where she had been among those women kept for serial violation. But this is not her deepest pain, which is that her other son Elvin, who disappeared from the police station at which he worked, has never been found. “He was killed out there somewhere, but I don’t know where,” she says. “Or how. What did he last see? Did he die quickly or in pain? Without knowing these things, I myself become ‘missing’.” Elezovic is one of thousands in Bosnia or scattered worldwide, who – 23 years after the hurricane of violence began – live this cruel limbo. Until August 2013, some 1,000 people were still missing in the Prijedor area, but every so often the ground gives up its grisly secrets and villagers in a place called Tomasica, near Omarska, noticed a strange taste in their water and odours in the area. The Sarajevo-based International Commission for Missing Persons and local affiliates was called in: 596 bodies had been buried in the ground near their homes. The process pioneered in Bosnia duly began again, seeking to match remains with DNA from relatives, and last year the reburials began, sometimes of a few bones which a family was obliged to regard as a corpse, on other occasions more complete skeletons.

One volunteer who returned to her family home to administer the re-interments was Victoria-Amina Dautovic, now 22, who had been in utero at Trnopolje camp. She became the first baby born to a Bosnian refugee family in the UK and, growing up in Luton, is training in forensic science, resolved to help find her friends’ parents and parents’ friends. So after Thursday’s commemoration at Omarska, Dautovic visited Tomasica to contemplate an apparently innocuous lake from which reeds grow. She went also to the building in Sanski Most where she worked in an office off the large space where skeletons from the area are meticulously assembled. “The names of families I know, friends of my mum and dad, were written on the papers,” she recalls, “and families were coming into the next-door office crying, but I did my job – and I want to continue this work, which for me is the most important thing of all: to find and identify these people, so that the living can at least be given back their dead.”

“All these people came to mass graves in trucks and were buried with bulldozers,” says Edin Ramulic of an organization called Izvor, which campaigns with relatives of the missing. “They drove past people’s houses along quiet roads. For every one missing person, at least three people know exactly where they are buried – the driver, the digger, and the policeman, plus whoever saw them pass – but all remain silent. While that silence persists, you cannot call this peace.”

EU needs to confront Dodik (Euobserver, By Andrew Rettman)

A campaign by Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, against the judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina is threatening to derail the European Union’s approach to the country. The Bosnian Serbs are poised to hold a referendum on the powers of state-level prosecutors and judges as early as September, and while diplomats have warned Dodik that the referendum would be illegal, it is unclear what counter-measures, if any, they might be considering. In mid-July, foreign diplomats, including the ambassadors of the EU, several member states, and the US, travelled to Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska (RS), to warn the Bosnian Serbs against the referendum.

“We are deeply concerned that the proposed referendum would represent an unconstitutional attempt not to reform but to undermine and weaken those authorities, and would thus pose a direct threat to the sovereignty and security of the country as a whole”, they said in a joint statement. “This cannot be tolerated”. Diplomats on the ground and in the capitals are now considering their options in reacting to the referendum threat. There are still hurdles to clear for the referendum to take place. Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) deputies in the RS parliament vetoed the referendum decision, which might mean that the RS Supreme Court has the last word. But few observers believe that this procedure could stop the referendum. Only the international community, and specifically the EU together with the US, has the weight to prevent Dodik from following through on the plan – either by confronting him or by appeasing him. In deciding which course to take, the EU and the US should consider the sources of the current crisis. The referendum seeks to annul decisions imposed by the international high representative, who oversees implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace accords, and specifically those decisions to do with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the state-level Prosecutor’s Office, with their branches for corruption and organized crime. Dodik claims that the two institutions are unconstitutional since Dayton assigns competence for judicial matters to the entities, not to the state – an argument refuted by Bosnia’s constitutional court in 2009 (the Court and Prosecutor’s Office were established with the agreement of the entity parliaments, a decision backed by Dodik and his party at the time).

Dodik also maintains that the state-level judiciary is anti-Serb because its proceedings have focused on Bosnian Serbs.

Three goals – In going after the judiciary, Dodik appears to be pursuing at least three distinct goals.

First, he wants to prevent corruption investigations that might be outside of his control. In this, he has the tacit support of other political leaders in the country who have much to fear, at least in theory, from an empowered, independent anti-corruption prosecutor. Second, Dodik wants to challenge the ‘Bonn powers’ of the high representative (currently Valentin Inzko of Austria). The Bonn powers include the power to strike down domestic laws or decisions deemed to be anti-Dayton, and the power to impose decisions in order to strengthen the Dayton system. Previous high representatives used these powers to impose various measures to strengthen Bosnia’s state-level institutions. So Dodik’s third motive in threatening a referendum is to obstruct the central government and to chip away at its authority.

Déjà vu – The international community has been here before. In late 2009, it caved in to Dodik when he demanded an end to the executive role of international prosecutors and judges at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina dealing with organized crime and corruption (those dealing with war crimes were allowed to stay on, highlighting the true nature of Dodik’s worries). When Dodik again challenged the power of the central-level judiciary, in 2011, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign-policy chief at the time, made an unprecedented visit to Banja Luka to offer concessions.

In exchange for dropping the referendum threat – “for now,” as he stressed, standing next to Ashton, during their joint news conference – Dodik was given a symbolic victory: A “structured dialogue” on justice was launched, sending the signal that Dodik’s complaint about the judiciary might have some validity. Dodik has now dusted off his complaint about the judiciary’s alleged bias. This time around, the international response was less tepid; it appears that some EU member states have recognised that appeasing Dodik will not make the problem go away but merely postpone the day of reckoning. When the EU’s foreign ministers discussed the referendum threat at their monthly meeting on 20 July, Slovenia, Croatia, and Slovakia were adamant that a referendum would be in violation of the Dayton agreement (Slovakia’s foreign minister, Miroslav Lajcak, was Inzko’s predecessor as high representative). The Office of the High Representative, in an analysis prepared ahead of the referendum decision, also took that view. This would, in principle, allow Inzko to move against Dodik and those in charge of organising the referendum, for example by removing them from office. But this is purely theoretical: the high representative’s authority has been sapped by years of deliberate neglect on the part of the EU, which dislikes the institution’s executive mandate, and he will not be able to act without the backing of major member states.

He also has no instruments to enforce his decisions.

Dodik – The EU itself could, in principle, move on its own against Dodik, who is reported to have property in an EU member state and would therefore be vulnerable to an asset freeze. But the chance to move pre-emptively has been lost: the first Foreign Affairs Council meeting after the summer break is on 12 October, and whatever action the ministers might take would be retrospective.

No meeting is scheduled for September, when foreign ministers will be in New York for the UN General Assembly. An informal meeting on 4 and 5 September in the ‘Gymnich’ format lacks the power to adopt restrictive measures or formal conclusions. Dodik has been laying the groundwork for a confrontation by spending considerable public funds on lobbying and legal representation in Washington, and, presumably, Brussels as well. Last year, the RS government spent at least $2.5 million in the US, according to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. (there are no such reporting obligations in the EU). Since 2009, the RS has been paying a monthly retainer to the Washington firm of Picard, Kentz & Rowe. The retainer dropped from a peak of $167,000 a month to $90,000 in the most recent contract, signed in January 2015.

According to its Scope of Engagement, the firm’s services include “advice and representation” on matters including “RS legal rights and obligations under applicable international law including the Dayton Peace Accords” and “RS and B&H rights and obligations vis a vis the Office of the High Representative” – precisely the issue at stake.

Default setting – At present, it looks unlikely that the EU will impose sanctions or any other measures. The EU’s default setting is to engage with elected leaders, no matter how abusive of their office they may be. Prime Minister Gruevski of Macedonia, newly empowered by a badly thought-through deal brokered by the EU, is a case in point. Dodik has sought confrontation with the international community because he thrives on confrontation. Some diplomats believe that by pushing back, the international community is giving Dodik what he wants. But by not pushing back, it would allow him to claim victory – and pave the way for yet another confrontation at a time of his choosing.

Russia Sparks Row over International Role in Bosnia (BIRN, By Srecko Latal)

The Russian ambassador to Sarajevo proposed that international supervision of the country should end and that local leaders should take Bosnia and Herzegovina’s future into their own hands. Senad Sepic, one of the MPs from the leading Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, reacted angrily to the proposal by the Russian ambassador, Petr Ivantsov, who suggested that the international supervision of the country should end. “We are convinced that the time has come to end the experiment of the outside protectorate over independent Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Ivantsov said in a column in Banja Luka-based newspaper Nezavisne Novine on Friday. Ivantsov argued that supervision by Bosnia’s international governance body, the Office of the High Representative, OHR, creates dependency and prevents reconciliation and progress.” The time has come that we finally allow people of Bosnia and Herzegovina to take full responsibility for the fate of their country into their own hands; responsibility for their present and future, without interference from the Office of the High Representative and foreign embassies,” he wrote. But Sepic said that if Moscow wants to pull out of the Peace Implementation Council, the international ad-hoc body established 20 years ago to oversee the work of the OHR, it should do so itself and leave the US and other Western countries in charge. “And why should Russia not unilaterally leave the Peace Implementation Council? And leave it to the management of democratic, modern and developed countries towards which all citizens of this country (Serbs and Croats as well as Bosniaks) are oriented,” Sepic asked in a blog post that was published on social networks and local web portals on Sunday. Sepic also said that the Russian ambassador’s argument followed the line taken by the president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who recently launched an initiative to hold a referendum that would challenge the authority of state judiciary and the OHR. “In his column, the Russian ambassador called for the closure of the OHR at the moment when one man (Dodik) and his policy threaten to push Bosnia and Herzegovina into a referendum that is against the constitution,” Sepic said. He argued that Ivantsov was hoping to push Bosnia and Herzegovina away from the EU and eventual membership of the European club. Ivantsov’s proposal also chimes with Western concerns that Russia is using its traditionally good relations with Serbs in the Balkans to increase its influence across the region. Public debate on the future of the international role in the country has been intensifying as the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton peace accord which ended the 1992-95 war approaches in December this year. A few weeks ago, Nezavisne Novine announced that it will be publishing two commentaries on the issue each week, which will provide material for a pamphlet and a conference in September. Several local and regional officials, intellectuals and international diplomats have already published texts on the issue.