SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s Serb Republic on Thursday pushed ahead with separatist reforms in violation of the country’s constitution, and its pro-Russian leader Milorad Dodik publicly goaded state prosecutors one day after they issued a warrant for his arrest.
The actions raise the stakes in a dispute which pits Dodik and his allies Russia and Serbia against the United States and the European Union and which represents one of the biggest threats to peace in the Balkans since the 1990s conflicts that followed Yugoslavia’s collapse.
Bosnian state prosecutors on Wednesday ordered Dodik’s arrest for ignoring a court summons, a move which Dodik pledged to resist with help from Russia. His regional police force said it would protect Dodik from arrest.
“You want to arrest us? Come on, try to arrest us,” Dodik shouted in a long address to lawmakers in the Serb Republic parliament on Thursday.
Dodik said the charges brought against him demonstrated that he and his allies had a political plan to create a new constitutional order.
The parliament of the autonomous Serb Republic was discussing on Thursday the draft of a new constitution that would equip the region with sovereign authority. It also provides for the creation of a separate Serb army and judiciary, as well as the right to self-determination and to join other state unions. Dodik favours joining neighbouring Serbia.
Bosnia has been made up of the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic since the end of the 1992-95 war, in which 100,000 people were killed. They are linked by a weak central government in a state supervised by an international envoy whose role is to prevent the country slipping back into conflict.
The latest dispute began after Dodik defied rulings by the international envoy. He was sentenced to a year in jail and banned from holding office for six years.
In response, Dodik initiated laws barring state judiciary and police from the region. The state prosecutors’ office then opened an inquiry into what it described as an attack on constitutional order.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Edward McAllister and Gareth Jones)
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