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Ultimatum to Serbia Splits Bosnian Presidency

19 04 2007  Serb refusal to back demand for Belgrade to arrest war crimes suspects highlights county’s insoluble divisions.

By Gordana Katana in Banja Luka (Balkan Insight, 19 April 07)

Plans for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s presidency to urge Serbia to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice and cooperate with the Hague tribunal have divided the country.

The three-man presidency was unable to reach a common position on the demand after its Serb member, Nebojsa Radmanovic, vetoed the decision.

As a result there was a split decision, which has weakened its authority.

Analysts say the row highlights the divided country’s inability to reach a consensus on basic issues regarding the 1991-95 war and its effects.

Some analysts also say the Bosnian Serbs’ unwillingness to back calls for Serbia to hand over Hague fugitives shows they are not ready to comply with similar orders themselves.

The International Court of Justice, ICJ, based in The Hague, instructed Serbia on February 26 to take immediate action to punish genocide acts committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as to apprehend war crimes suspects and hand them over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY.

The Bosnian presidency’s Muslim representative, Haris Siljadzic, and his Croat counterpart, Zeljko Komsic, then initiated a declaration at the body’s April 11 session, demanding that Serbia comply with the international convention on punishing war crimes, arrest all war crimes suspects in its territory, extradite them to ICTY and to punish all war crimes felons under its jurisdiction.

Radmanovic declined to support the initiative, saying it was not in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s competence to interpret the ICJ decision. He added that such a demand would be tantamount to interference with Serbia’s internal affairs.

Radmanovic also summoned a session of the Bosnian Serb parliament, which should determine whether the initiative represented a violation of the vital interests of their entity, the Republika Srpska, RS.

Branko Todorovic, director of RS Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, told Balkan Insight he did not believe the presidency’s demand would have posed a threat to RS interests.

“Most RS parliament deputies support the idea that war crimes suspects should be apprehended,” he said. “But common sense here gives way to widespread political defiance.”

He was referring to the climate of deep suspicion between the country’s Bosniaks and Serbs.

The deputy speaker of the RS parliament, Sevket Hafizovic, also denied that arresting war crimes suspects would jeopardise RS interests.

“Serb politicians were strongly opposed to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s genocide charge against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but that issue is over now,” he said.

“Everyone must come to terms with the fact that the ICJ decision has to be honoured.”

However, Igor Radojicic, the speaker of the RS parliament and secretary of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, rubbished claims that Bosnian Serbs in general opposed arresting war crimes suspects. “That is a classic example of twisting a thesis,” he said.

Radojicic defended the move by the Serb member of the presidency, saying the proposed demand would be “interfering with the internal affairs of another state and [be] detrimental to good-neighbourly relations between the two countries”.

Radmanovic received total support from most Serbian parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, and the hardline Serbian Radical Party, SRS.

The SDS leader, Mladen Bosic, said the “national interest of the RS and its Serbs” was to maintain close ties with Serbia, and he qualified the presidency declaration as “an obvious attempt” to spoil those relations.

Haris Siljadzic condemned Radmanovic’s use of the veto, saying it had “turned the RS into Serbia’s agent, the same way as it did when the RS institutions committed genocide in Bosnia”.

He said the move “sends a loud and clear message to all non-Serbs living in the RS that they are second-class citizens, as well as that RS interests are directly opposed to their interest in seeing genocide suspects brought to justice”.

Komsic was also disappointed with Radmanovic’s veto and said he had acted as “a deputy of Serbia and not Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

The country’s lawsuit at the ICJ against Serbia has been a divisive issue ever since it was launched 12 years ago.

Serbs celebrated when the court recently ruled that Serbia was not guilty of the main genocide charge.

Bosniaks drew some comfort from the fact that the ICJ found Serbia guilty of not doing enough to prevent and punish those who had committed war crimes and genocide.

Tanja Topic, of the Friedrich Ebert foundation, said the latest development highlighted the divided loyalties of the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Our institutions include people who represent the interests of Serbia and Croatia more than they do Bosnia and Herzegovina’s,” she said.

“On the other hand there are [Bosniak] deputies in the Bosnian Serb republic parliament who receive a monthly pay check from that institution while advocating the scrapping of RS as a separate entity.”

Those divisions are reflected on the ground. Zijahudin Smajlovic, Bosniak chair of the Banja Luka prisoners of war association, said it was incredible that the RS authorities still seemed opposed to arresting war crime suspects.

“If that’s how they choose to defend Serbia, how can we possibly believe they are prepared to arrest and put on trial war crimes suspects here?” he asked.

The Spona (Link) association of Serbian non-government organisations in the RS, on the other hand, supported Radmanovic and described the veto as “defending the RS from the Sarajevo government’s efforts to scrap the Bosnian Serb Republic”.

Branko Todorovic said it remained to be seen how long the RS would keep acting as Serbia’s instrument.

“The RS is relentlessly defiant in defending Serbia’s interests although the policy is harmful to both parties,” he said.

Topic said the “voice of reason” that was sadly missing in Bosnia and Herzegovina itself needed to come from Serbia.

At an April 18 meeting in Belgrade, Serbia’s president, Boris Tadic, told Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign minister, Sven Alkalaj, that Serbia was ready to comply with the international convention on punishing genocide.

Topic described this as encouraging, and as vital to hopes that political tension in Bosnia and Herzegovina might one day be eased.

Gordana Katana is a regular correspondent of Balkan Insight based in Banja Luka. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.