By Daria Sito-Sucic
SARAJEVO (Reuters) -Bosnia’s autonomous Serb region passed legislation barring the national police and judiciary from its territory after a state court banned its separatist leader Milorad Dodik from politics for six years and sentenced him to a year in prison.
The separatist gambit could become a constitutional crisis in ethnically divided post-war Bosnia. Russia, Dodik’s most powerful supporter, said the court verdict was politically motivated and would destabilise the Balkans.
The court in Sarajevo convicted Dodik after he signed Serb Republic legislation suspending rulings by Bosnia’s constitutional court and international envoy Christian Schmidt, who oversees implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty.
Dodik was not present for the court’s ruling in the Bosnian capital on Wednesday, and he rejected the outcome.
“This moment is favourable and I call on you to vote for the law without hesitation,” he told MPs before they passed the measure in the Serb regional capital Banja Luka. “We think this creates momentum for us to do this without the use of force.”
He said the Serb Republic (RS) aimed to roll back all reforms imposed by peace envoys – creating state judiciary, police, joint military and tax administrations – to counter separatism and make the fragile country more functional.
Serb nationalist Dodik heads one of two autonomous entities – the other is the Bosniak-Croat Federation – set up and linked via a weak central government based in Sarajevo under the Dayton accords to prevent Bosnia re-igniting in conflict.
Schmidt and major power ambassadors on his Peace Implementation Council condemned the RS assembly’s action, suggesting it could undermine Bosnia’s peace and security and calling for the legislation to be rescinded.
“These actions by the ruling coalition in Republika Srpska seek to destabilise the institutions exercising constitutional responsibilities of the state, in accordance with the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Schmidt said in a statement.
The 1992-95 war among Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniak Muslims killed more than 100,000 people – the worst of the conflicts that erupted as federal Yugoslavia broke up.
In Washington, the State Department this week reaffirmed U.S. support for the Dayton accords, brokered by U.S. diplomats,saying it firmly opposed any actions by local leaders that would undermine Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Banja Luka parliament also adopted a law establishing a parallel RS High Judicial and Prosecutors Council, and a law labelling non-profit groups funded from abroad as “foreign agents”, which rights groups said was modelled on a 2012 Russian law used to suppress pro-democracy groups and independent media.
Moderate opposition deputies boycotted the vote, with some warning it would weaken the Dayton accords and both the national and Serb Republic constitutions.
Aleksandar Vucic, the president of neighbouring Serbia, which Bosnian Serbs regard as their mother country, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also condemned the court’s conviction of Dodik.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Mark Heinrich)
