Republika Srpska President MIiorad Dodik said today that “the solution is for the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to extradite Schmidt to us, for us to deal with him, to process him and lock him up in our prisons”.
“The solution is that, Schmidt and the decisions are out. We will then suspend our acts that were reactions from being implemented and start negotiating a possible Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Dodik said in response to questions from journalists in East Sarajevo.
He said that in Bosnia and Herzegovina “the Dayton Agreement and the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina are not respected”, and accused Bosniak politicians of, in his words, “allowing foreigners to come and spread a false narrative that the RS and its officials are violating the Dayton Agreement”.
He made a series of insults at the High Representative Christian Schmidt, claiming that he came “using fascist methods, to impose his will.”
He said that the High Representative has no legitimacy, no rights and no authority.
“This is harming BiH’s ability to survive,” Dodik said.
Referring to last night’s “attempted arrest” in East Sarajevo, Dodik said that the RS MUP police officers were “doing their job.”
“Three men appeared who introduced themselves as SIPA inspectors, without showing any documents. When they said they had a warrant, they (the RS police officers) said that this was not the place where they should exist,” Dodik claimed.
Suspension of budget funding
When asked how he would comment on High Representative Christian Schmidt’s decision to suspend budget funding for his party SNSD and United Srpska, Dodik again leveled a series of insults at Schmidt, saying:
“How is it possible that other political parties have income and we don’t have it. To deny it to us. We are a parliamentary party. I get my salary by mail, I don’t get my salary in the party,” Dodik said.
High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt today made a decision to suspend all budget funds for financing the political parties SNSD and United Srpska at all levels of government.
Crisis in BiH
The political crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina followed after the Court of BiH, in late February, sentenced the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, to a year in prison and a six-year ban from holding the office of entity president, for “disrespecting the decisions of the High Representative in BiH”.
The BiH Prosecutor’s Office subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Dodik, as well as RS Prime Minister Radovan Višković and Nenad Stevandić, the head of the entity’s assembly. They are suspected of the crime of “attack on the constitutional order” after the RS National Assembly adopted, and Dodik signed, a decree promulgating laws prohibiting the operation of state judicial and security institutions in that BiH entity.
The BiH Court had previously accepted the State Prosecutor’s Office’s proposal to issue international arrest warrants for Dodik and Stevandić, who are charged with the crime of “attack on the constitutional order”. Interpol did not issue an international arrest warrant, and the BiH Court requested a review of that decision.
Dodik has since crossed the border of Bosnia and Herzegovina several times to travel abroad.
