BHRT investigated the whereabouts of the original copy of the Dayton Peace Agreement brought by Alija Izetbegović from Paris. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, nobody knows that today.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has an original copy of the Dayton Peace Agreement, but in English. Our country does not have this copy in the Bosnian language as it was signed in Dayton.
And this copy, as a copy, came to our country five years ago from Paris, through OHR and at the request of Slaven Kovačević, advisor to the Chairman of the BiH Presidency Željko Komšić. This document is in the BiH Presidency building. Kovačević explains that the document consists of 11 annexes, but also a part that clearly explains how and who was in charge of the translation.
“One of those documents is a translation document signed by the then Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Yugoslavia that within 60 days they will translate the Dayton Peace Agreement from English into Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Croatia translated into Croatian, the then Yugoslavia into Serbian, and our domestic actors wanted to translate it into Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian, which is not part of the agreement. This agreement must be translated into one language, as it is written here in the Bosnian language,” explains Željko Komšić’s advisor from the field of law Slaven Kovačević.
The first to say that the original copy of the Dayton Peace Agreement was missing from the Presidency was Željko Komšić, then Chairman of the BiH Presidency. He even announced an investigation.
“And when you say that investigative authorities should be called to investigate it, he says don’t. Investigative authorities will be called to investigate where the original of the Dayton Peace Treaty is,” Komšić said back in 2008.
Where is the original Dayton Peace Agreement signed in 1995, brought to Sarajevo by Alija Izetbegović, no one can answer today.
“To be honest, I don’t have that information, I’m not sure if any of my colleagues know. It’s an interesting question,” says BiH Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković.
It is not even known that this document is required institutionally.
“Should I look for the missing what? – The Dayton Peace Agreement. Yes, a copy. The Republic of Serbia has it and of course the RS acts in accordance with the Dayton Agreement. I would like it not to exist. Then it means that there is no Constitutional Court, that there is no high representative Maybe the foreigners have realized that there is no such thing, so they are behaving like that,” stated the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik.
There is even a question as to whether the document existed and where it was stored after arriving in Sarajevo. Even the participants in the Dayton negotiations have different statements about it.
“As far as I know, that original is in Paris, we have never seen it. The Assembly of the Republic of BiH, which I led, never considered the Dayton Peace Agreement,” says Miro Lazović, a participant in the Dayton negotiations.
“That is not true. We did not lose anything from Dayton. We adopted a copy of the Dayton Agreement and there is no one who does not have it,” says Vladimir Lukić, a member of the Serbian delegation in Dayton.
“It didn’t even happen that the U.S. assigned an original copy to the signatory countries. Zagreb and Belgrade made their own translation, which unfortunately is not identical in all elements. Bosnia and Herzegovina lost it, there is no reliable data that it was lost, and an authentic translation of the Dayton Peace Agreement was never made. “, said Kasim Trnka.
“The very fact that the Dayton Peace Agreement is interpreted in three languages makes it impossible for us, without original insight, to actually interpret very important things in such a way that they only serve to strengthen certain structures,” says Nermina Mujagić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences at UNSA.
This raises the question that the mystery of the original agreement is a farce that has paralyzed the system and opened up the possibility of different interpretations.
