Dacic: Any pressure on Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina is pressure on Serbia, harmonized policy is important

Photo: Tanjug/JOVANA KULASEVIC

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic stated today that any pressure on Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is in fact pressure on Serbia, and stressed that it is important that the policies of Belgrade and Banja Luka are harmonized, while it is necessary to make wise political moves, with full coordination between the leaderships of Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS, Serb entity in BiH).

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Speaking about the situation in BiH and RS, after the Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina stripped the mandate of RS President Milorad Dodik, Dacic said that it is very complex and "probably the most serious" since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (in 1995) - and stressed that it is necessary to make wise and thoughtful moves, fully coordinated between the leadership of Serbia, i.e. President Aleksandar Vucic, and the RS leadership, i.e. Milorad Dodik.

Dacic assessed that through certain revisions of the Dayton Agreement, an attempt is being made to achieve something that is not in that agreement, which is the centralization of BiH, taking away the entities' powers as much as possible, and imposing one constituent nation of BiH without the other two - the Serbs and the Croats.

"This is a step towards disempowerment and dismantling of RS through pressure on Serbia to join in all of this. There are external and internal factors in our country that are supposed to weaken our position as much as possible, damage our relations with key factors such as Russia and China, cause internal instability, including the situation in Kosovo and Metohija embodied in the terror that's carried out against the Serb people," Dacic told TV Pink.

He added that it is always said that Belgrade is behind anything the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina do, and reminded that the First World War broke out because of the allegation that Serbia was behind the Sarajevo assassination.

Dacic pointed out that it is therefore important that the policies of Belgrade and Banja Luka are harmonized and that Serb national interests are defined.

"In the past, we didn't really have much success in that, and that's why various obstacles and conflicts happened, which at times led to the loss of some territories, such as Krajina," said Dacic.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)