The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bisera Turkovic, posted on Facebook where she reacted to the statement made by BiH Presidency member Milorad Dodik after the meeting with the Russian ambassador to our country, Igor Kalabuhov.
Turkovic emphasized that at that meeting there were again no state features and that Dodik stated several untruths regarding the gas pipeline construction projects.
“Dodik asserted that “Bosniaks in the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not want to vote on this”. Which is an absolute twist of theses. Dodik kept silent about the real side of the story. And that is that the RS Government, through the Chairman of the BiH Council of Ministers, Zoran Tegeltija, is blocking the project of building a southern interconnection through which BiH would cease to be dependent on Russian gas!”
The way of decision-making is absolutely unacceptable
Namely, at one of the recent sessions of the BiH Council of Ministers, Tegeltija proposed to vote in one decision for the construction of a gas pipeline to the south and the construction of a new gas pipeline to Serbia. Such a way of decision-making is absolutely unacceptable for several reasons, and the Office for Legislation has warned of a series of legal omissions in the aforementioned proposal.
However, there is an essential difference between these two projects – one, the southern interconnection through which BiH could get gas from other sources, not only from Russia, has all the approvals and positive opinions and a clear basis and interest for BiH. While the second, the new gas pipeline to Serbia, has not yet received a single agreement, nor have the proposal procedures been followed, nor is there a proven need for it.
The southern interconnection is essential for the further development of the distribution network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as for the security of gas supply throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Security of supply means securing two entrances of natural gas in BiH, which will be able to respond to the needs of consumers in natural gas at any time and cancel any blackmail on the existing direction of supply, which we have witnessed in the past years – said Turkovic.
Dodik has no sincere intentions
She added that the implementation of the project would enable access to a larger number of sources of supply, more precisely access to gas sources from the Krk LNG terminal, the Caspian region, EU gas hubs, and access to gas storages in the region.
“On the other hand, the new eastern gas pipeline to Serbia has not obtained consent, nor is there a proven basis or interest for Bosnia and Herzegovina to build a new large gas pipeline to Serbia, that is, to the Russian gas source.”
”I am afraid that Dodik does not have the sincere intention of building a new gas pipeline to Serbia, but only blocking the project that will reduce BiH’s dependence on Russia,” Turkovic wrote.
