Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Thursday that Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s threats to secede are nothing new because separatist secessionist tendencies within the Republika Srpska have been going on for years, and he reiterated that Croatia supports an integrated BiH and its path to Europe.
In an interview with entity television RTRS, Dodik announced that the RS parliament will declare independence on the same day that the high representative for BiH Christian Schmidt imposes the law on the status of state property. He said that there are announcements that such a decision will be made already in January, adding that in the RS they have already made preparations for such a scenario, that is, for the declaration of secession.
He also said that he has friends in the world who will prevent international military intervention in the event that Republika Srpska declares secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“There are separatist and secessionist tendencies within the Republika Srpska that have been going on for years. It’s nothing new, we’ve been talking about it for the last ten years (…), to me this seems like everything we’ve seen before,” Plenković said at the Government session.
He pointed out, however, that there are also “tendencies for stronger centralization, unitarization of the country coming from some Bosniak parties”.
“And you have a concept mostly advocated by the Croatian political parties, which is based on the equality of all three constituent nations, where in my opinion the Croats are the ones who are the most interested and engaged in the country’s European path, which we believe is good for all three nations and we will support that.” , said the Prime Minister.
According to him, Dodik’s statements are a “repetition”, although, as he said, the broader political context should not be underestimated.
“So at this point, without underestimating this wider context – the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, the Israeli response and the ongoing conflict, the intensity of illegal migration which is more than visible, the wider instability which exists in parts of the African continent – all it reflects on Europe, including these tensions we had in Kosovo three months ago. These are all things that should not be underestimated,” Plenković said.
But Croatia, he repeated, “supports the whole of BiH to move towards Europe, to stabilize, to function, to have no tension and conflict”.
“That’s our goal. That’s our policy, consistent,” said the Croatian Prime Minister, reports Hina.
