DODIK: WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN BiH AND DO NOT NEED A TUTOR

BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 20 /SRNA/ – President Milorad Dodik said Republika Srpska's policy remained clear and that it was not interested in BiH, except perhaps in preserving the country as established by the Dayton Peace Accords.

Dodik said Bosniaks might not like that position, but argued that it would also be better for them to govern the territory they effectively control, saying it was preferable to have full authority over one part than none over the whole of BiH. He claimed that, historically, political forces in Sarajevo had shown hostility toward Serbs whenever they had the opportunity. "In the 1990s they drove Serbs out of Sarajevo, and for 30 years they have been saying that we are the bad ones. They do not understand that there is no one in Republika Srpska who does not look with disgust at those hypocritical claims about the supposed beauty of coexistence in which they seek to be the majority," Dodik told the Belgrade daily Politika. He announced that he would seek an agreement with the opposition for a joint approach at the BiH level. According to Dodik, this would include demands to abolish the Court and Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, or at least significantly revise and restrict their jurisdiction to matters concerning relations at the state level, so that, as he put it, the institutions could not act as an inquisition against Republika Srpska. Dodik said what he described as a Bosniak attempt to continue centralization through the judiciary now that there was no high representative would not succeed. "All imposed reforms and solutions must be rejected so that we can agree at the BiH level on what is actually possible. Republika Srpska must not allow what was created through coercion to become permanent. Two years ago we were being persecuted, prisons were being prepared for us, and during all that lost time we could have reached some kind of agreement," Dodik said. He stressed that continuous dialogue with Serbia was Republika Srpska's top priority and said it also maintained contacts with Russia and the current US administration. He added that cooperation would be immediately suspended if a future US administration pursued policies similar to those of former President Joe Biden, though he said he believed the era of what he called quasi-liberals had passed. Dodik also said Republika Srpska maintained very good relations with political allies in Europe, some of whom were in government and some in opposition, and added that he regretted the electoral defeat of Hungarian politician Viktor Orban. "I was recently in Israel and met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At the end of the month I am going to Russia, while /Serb member of the BiH Presidency/ Željka Cvijanović will be in the United States. Continuity is very important in politics," Dodik said. His recent meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem was also reported by Serbian and Republika Srpska media. He added that he had maintained contacts for some time with representatives of Germany's Alternative for Germany /AfD/, saying that, regardless of how the party was portrayed, the most important thing for the Republika Srpska leadership was that its representatives were not hostile toward Serbs and believed Serbs had been treated unjustly. Dodik asked why Republika Srpska and Serbs should oppose people who support Serb national interests, and why they should instead support German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, being openly hostile toward Serbs. "I want Britain to break apart, just as Donald Trump sees it. If Germany achieved the policy of 'one people - one state,' why could Ireland not do the same, for example?" Dodik said. He reminded that Christian Schmidt had come to BiH, in Dodik's view, to take property away from Republika Srpska, and argued that nowhere else in the world had an unelected foreign official removed a legally elected president. "The Germans are now trying to push that story aside, but I do not want that, and we will be very active. They need to know that we know what they are doing and what they have been like for the past 25 years," Dodik said. He stressed that Republika Srpska's message was that BiH did not need a tutor, adding that elections were being held for the first time without a high representative. "That did not happen by accident and is part of many earlier agreements," Dodik said. He added that political actors in Sarajevo had, by pursuing unconstitutional solutions, missed the opportunity to discuss what could realistically be agreed.