Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Zlatko Lagumdzija commented on the activities of the High Representative Christian Schmidt, the Berlin process and the crisis in the Middle East.
Speaking about Schmidt’s equating of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic and the first president of the Presidency of the Republic of BiH (RBiH), Alija Izetbegovic, he said that he wanted to separate Schmidt’s concrete moves from the institution of the Office of the High Representative (OHR).
“It is necessary as an institution that will continue for a long time until the problems that Dayton is supposed to be solved in a normal way are solved, which is to have more efficient state mechanisms, to disable blockades, to establish an efficient Constitutional Court, etc.”, adds Lagumdzija.
For the current high representative, he stated that he has become like Vegeta spice, that he interferes, as he stated, with everything. He pointed out Schmidt’s first catastrophic mistake when he imposed changes to the Election Law on the night of the 2022 election. In addition, he agrees that it is completely inappropriate for Schmidt to go to the European Court of Human Rights because of the “Kovacevic” verdict.
“Whether consciously or unconsciously, I no longer have a clue, interfering with everything that he knows and does not know, he decided to fall into quicksand because equating a convicted war criminal with the first president of the RBiH Presidency, who had respect in the entire democratic world, both in the East and in the West, it’s completely inappropriate. I don’t know if it occurred to him to compare Hitler and Churchill, but it didn’t occur to him,” he said.
Lagumdzija believes that Schmidt’s statement represents an undermining of the UN as an institution that stands behind his legitimacy, as well as international law, of which the Court in The Hague, which sentenced Mladic, is a part.
He stated that BiH did not benefit from the Berlin process. However, he also had objections to the behavior of the European Union (EU) towards certain Western Balkan countries.
“Europe’s lethargy and their incorrectness towards the region, towards some countries that have done a lot and were brutally rejected, such as North Macedonia, which changed its name, and then did not even get a date for the start of negotiations,” he said.
He is of the opinion that the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, made the best use of this situation with the “Open Balkans”.
“The ‘Open Balkans’ was an attempt to dominate one country and manipulate the frustrations we have due to the EU’s unfairness, and it was a process without any means. The Berlin process includes all six countries of the Western Balkans, has the full support of the EU and has funds behind it, most importantly.Ten years ago, there were no such funds,” he noted.
In reference to why BiH supports Palestine and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, he reminded that there are now two million people in Gaza in a territory which, he emphasized, is the size of the Shanghai International Airport.
He pointed out that BiH supporting Guterres is not only because of his attitude towards Palestine, but also because of his attitude towards BiH and due to respect for international law. For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that he can no longer be considered a credible person and that he goes beyond all limits, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
