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During his visit to the Bosnian capital on Monday, Mark Rutte reaffirmed NATO’s support for Bosnia’s territorial integrity and peace.
NATO’s secretary general on Monday pledged the military alliance’s “unwavering” support for Bosnia’s territorial integrity, visiting the capital Sarajevo amid one of the most significant political crises in the country since the end of the 1992-1995 war.”Three decades after the Dayton Peace Agreement, I can tell you: NATO remains firmly committed to the stability of this region and to the security of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Rutte said. “We will not allow hard-won peace to be jeopardised.”Rutte called any actions undermining the accord, the constitutional order or national institutions “unacceptable”. “Inflammatory rhetoric and actions are dangerous. They pose a direct threat to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s stability and security,” the NATO chief added.Rutte’s comments came days after the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb-majority entity of the Republika Srpska (RS), Milorad Dodik, introduced new laws meant to ban the operation of state-level security and judicial institutions in what comprises about half of the Western Balkan country’s territory. The acts, which were previously adopted by the RS’ National Assembly, came in response to the first-instance verdict by the state-level Court of BiH against Dodik issued on 26 February, causing a major political crisis in the EU membership hopeful. The Sarajevo-based court sentenced the Bosnian Serb leader to one year in prison and barred him from politics for six years for going against the decisions of the international community’s peace envoy, German diplomat Christian Schmidt, which constitutes a criminal act. The verdict is not final, and Dodik can appeal it.In Bosnia, the High Representative acts as the chief arbiter in high-profile disputes and the key figure overseeing the implementation of the Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995 to stop the war in the country. The agreement brought about the end of the war between the country’s three main ethnic groups — Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats — that began in 1992 during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, deemed as the bloodiest conflict on European soil since World War II. The peace deal, parts of which act as the country’s constitution, split the country into two main administrative units, or entities: the Serb-majority RS and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of BiH (FBiH), partially overseen by an umbrella state-level government. Meant to appease the former belligerents, it created a complicated system of checks and balances, said to be the world’s most complex democracy. Dodik has rejected the sentence, calling it anti-Serb, as well as Schmidt’s legitimacy as High Representative.The situation has sparked fears of incidents, which some have likened to the situation in early 1992 that led to the start of the war in what was then one of the former Yugoslavia’s republics. Rutte, who said he shared concerns about the security situation, rejected this. “Let’s be clear, this is not 1992 and we will not allow a security vacuum to emerge,” he emphasised.A European peacekeeping force in Bosnia, EUFOR, has said it was stepping up the number of its troops in response to the tensions.Video editor • Lucy DavalouAdditional sources • AP
