The closed consultations of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, convened at the initiative of the Russian Federation, have ended. Only the Russian representative addressed the media. According to the Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to the UN, Zlatko Lagumdzija, it was precisely Russia that was the only member of the Council to deny international court rulings – which, along with criticism of the Office of the High Representative (OHR), was their main motive for holding the session.
Lagumdzija stated on Facebook that the attempt of the “MBB axis” (Moscow, Belgrade, Banja Luka) to “save Milorad Dodik” through the Security Council once again ended in failure.
In order to even procedurally place the topic of BiH on the agenda, the Russian side, he says, created a narrative of threatened peace, claiming that “the existence of BiH as a unified state is at stake.”
“After their collapse in the Security Council, it is clear that the threats of destroying BiH were and remain a shot from a blank gun,” said Lagumdzija, adding that such attempts are just a continuation of two years of pressure from the creators of the “Serbian World” concept.
“Drawing from experiences around the adoption of the Genocide Resolution and what genocide deniers in Srebrenica still do, instead of responding to media inquiries, in recent months, I have been working intensively on informing Security Council members about the facts and intentions of secessionists. The message was simple: only through timely truth and the rule of law can we avoid the crisis into which the creators of the ‘Serbian World,’ as a continuation of projects judged in The Hague, have been continuously trying to push us for the past two years,” added Lagumdzija.
All members of the Security Council, except Russia, reaffirmed their support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of BiH, the rule of law, and respect for the decisions of the courts and the Central Election Commission, he said, and emphasized that a greater number of countries expressed support for High Representative Christian Schmidt.
He specifically highlighted the statement by the representative of Pakistan, who – relying on Milorad Dodik’s statement from two days earlier – warned about the inadmissibility of targeting an entire religious community. Pakistan, recalling the region’s tragic experiences, warned that hate speech must not be tolerated.
Dodik’s statement that “Muslims are pathological enemies of Serbs” was, according to Lagumdzija, a sufficient indicator to the Security Council that such rhetoric and politics have no place in the civilized world.
“These words are, in themselves, the best proof before the international community of the true nature of the policy pursued by Dodik and his allies,” concluded the Ambassador of BiH to the UN, Zlatko Lagumdzija.
