Bosnian Serb leader redraws borders across the Balkans, causes fierce reactions (N1)
Bosnian Serb leader and tripartite Presidency Chairman, Milorad Dodik, redrew the borders between Bosnia and Serbia, saying that some kind of integration between Serbia, Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity and what he said is a Serb-dominated part of Montenegro must happen in the future.
“I know it won’t happen right now, but I'm sure it will happen in this century. One doesn’t have to be a genius to know that conditions will be met for this. This is our political wish,” Dodik told the Serbian Espreso.rs portal.
In a 2017 interview with Deutsche Welle, Dodik drew a map of his vision of the region where he drew Serbia and Bosnia’s Serb-dominated RS entity as one country. This caused fierce reactions then as it did now.
On Monday, Bosnia’s prime minister Denis Zvizdic said the border between Bosnia and Serbia would exist till the end of days.
"The border on the Drina river is the border between Bosnia and Serbia which has been there for centuries and will be there till the end of days," Zvizdic said. "The border between the two friendly, neighbouring countries will exist there until the end of the world."
Zvizdic argued that any radical statement, or a statement questioning Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial is deteriorating the positive atmosphere in the country. Everyone knows that Bosnia is a sovereign, independent and self-sufficient country which wants to build friendly relations with neighbouring countries – Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, based on mutual respect.
"I call upon our neighbours to stick to the fundamental democratic, European and international standards," Zvizdic concluded.
Montenegrin writer and publicist Andrej Nikolaidis told N1 that this is a first class scandal.
“You have a man presiding over a country, who said he was going to take away a part of your territory,” Nikolaidis said. “Chances for this to happen are slim to none. But, I’d also like to remind Dodik that Montenegro is part of NATO, so if he thinks of doing this by force, and that's the only way to do it, he would have to face the North-Atlantic Alliance because the Alliance is in charge of protecting the territorial integrity of each member state."
"So my message to Dodik would be not to be surprised if they get bombed like they were in the past,” Nikolaidis said for N1.