The Bosnian Serbs’ separatist leader vowed to carry on weakening his war-scarred country to the point where it will tear apart, despite a pledge by the United States to prevent such an outcome.
“I am not irrational, I know that America’s response will be to use force … but I have no reason to be frightened by that into sacrificing (Serb) national interests,” Milorad Dodik, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run part, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
He said any any attempt to use international intervention to further strengthen Bosnia’s shared, multiethnic institutions will be met by Bosnian Serb decision to abandon them completely and take the country back to the state of disunity and dysfunction it was in at the end of its brutal interethnic war in the 1990s.
Because Western democracies will not be agreeable to that, he added, “in the next stage, we will be forced by their reaction to declare full independence” of the Serb-controlled regions of Bosnia.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The Bosnian Serbs’ separatist leader vowed to carry on weakening his war-scarred country to the point where it will tear apart, despite a pledge by the United States to prevent such an outcome.
“I am not irrational, I know that America’s response will be to use force … but I have no reason to be frightened by that into sacrificing (Serb) national interests,” Milorad Dodik, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run part, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.
He said any any attempt to use international intervention to further strengthen Bosnia’s shared, multiethnic institutions will be met by Bosnian Serb decision to abandon them completely and take the country back to the state of disunity and dysfunction it was in at the end of its brutal interethnic war in the 1990s.
It also instituted the Office of the High Representative, an international body charged with shepherding the implementation of the peace agreement that was given broad powers to impose laws or dismiss officials who undermined the fragile post-war ethnic balance, including judges, civil servants, and members of parliament.
Over the years, the OHR has pressured Bosnia’s bickering ethnic leaders to build shared, statewide institutions, including the army, intelligence and security agencies, the top judiciary and the tax administration.
Dodik appeared unperturbed Friday by the statement posted a day earlier on X, formerly known as Twitter, by James O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, that Washington will act if anyone tries to change “the basic element” of the 1995 peace agreement for Bosnia, and that there is “no right of secession.”
The original article contains 627 words, the summary contains 272 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!