SARAJEVO: Bosnian authorities have issued an arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader Milorad Dodik, a senior police officer said Wednesday, as part of an investigation into his alleged flouting of the country’s constitution.
The announcement comes a week after police said they were seeking to question Dodik, who remained defiant and called on federal police to ignore the order.
But according to the head of police in Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat statelet, an arrest warrant has now been issued by authorities.
It also includes orders to detain Republika Srpska Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and Parliamentary Speaker Nenad Stevandic.
“We received an arrest warrant for these three individuals,” said Vahidin Munjic during an interview with local media.
“All police organs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, if they spot these individuals, are obligated to arrest them and hand them over to the state court.”
Tensions have soared in the divided Balkan country since Dodik was convicted last month for defying Christian Schmidt, the international envoy charged with overseeing the peace accords that ended Bosnia’s 1990s war.
Dodik, who is the president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) statelet, remains unrepentant. He helped push through laws forbidding the federal police and judiciary from entering Bosnia’s Serb entity in retaliation.
The laws were later struck down by the constitutional court.
Since the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, the country has consisted of two autonomous halves — the Serb-dominated RS and a Muslim-Croat region.
The two entities have their own governments and parliaments and are linked by weak central institutions.
During a meeting in the RS capital on Wednesday, Dodik appeared to pay little attention to the latest news concerning the warrant.
“We will continue to implement the policies adopted by the parliament,” he said, referring to the RS’s legislator.
Bosnia’s divided politics and fragile, post-war institutions have faced increasing uncertainty due to the unfolding political crisis.
On Tuesday, the head of Bosnia’s federal police force Darko Culum — an ally of Dodik — announced that he was resigning from the post and would return to work for the interior ministry in the RS.
Days earlier, Dodik had called on ethnic Serbs working for Bosnia’s national institutions to quit and take up jobs in the RS.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic — a major backer of Dodik — also said he planned to raise the issue of the arrest warrant during a visit to Brussels this week.
“We could end up in a total disaster overnight. That’s why we must do everything to preserve peace and stability,” Vucic said during an interview with a Serbian broadcaster.
For years, Dodik has pursued a separatist agenda, repeatedly threatening to pull the Serb statelet out of Bosnia’s central institutions — including its army, judiciary and tax system — which has led to sanctions from the United States.
The RS leader had already pushed through two earlier laws that refused to recognize decisions made by Schmidt and Bosnia’s constitutional court.
That led to his conviction last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison and handed a six-year ban from office.
Bosnia issues arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader
https://arab.news/6c4zq
Bosnia issues arrest warrant for ethnic Serb leader
- The announcement comes a week after police said they were seeking to question Dodik
- According to the head of police in Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat statelet, an arrest warrant has now been issued by authorities
UN envoy hopeful on Cyprus, says multi-party summit premature
- Holguin said she was hopeful after meeting with Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman
- “While encouraging, the dialogue process between both leaders is at its early beginning”
NICOSIA: The key UN envoy seeking to break a deadlock in Cyprus’s long-running division said she was cautiously optimistic about a breakthrough but that it would be premature to convene a multi-nation summit on the conflict.
In an interview with Cyprus’s Phileleftheros daily, envoy Maria Angela Holguin said she was hopeful after meeting with Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on December 11. She said their discussion, which agreed to focus also on confidence-building, was “deep, sincere and very straightforward.”
“While encouraging, the dialogue process between both leaders is at its early beginning. More will need to be done in order to strengthen the nascent momentum and establish a real climate of trust that would allow the Secretary-General to convene a 5+1 informal meeting,” said Holguin, a former Colombian foreign minister.
A 5+1 meeting would be an informal summit of the two Cypriot communities with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and representatives of Britain, Turkiye and Greece to define how to move forward and break a seven-year stalemate in peace talks. The three NATO nations are guarantor powers of Cyprus under a treaty which granted the island independence from Britain in 1960.
A power-sharing administration of Cypriot Greeks and Turks crumbled in 1963. Turkiye invaded the north of the island in 1974 after a brief coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece. The island has been split on ethnic lines ever since.
Turkish Cypriots live in a breakaway state in the north, while Greek Cypriots in the south run an internationally recognized administration representing the whole island in the European Union.
