Tuesday, March 18, 2008

NKRBH - #534 INTL 0 High Representative Lajcak: Biased and Unprofessional

National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina

ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International

No. 534

March 17, 2008

http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/

CONTENT

1. High Representative Miroslav Lajcak: Biased and Unprofessional

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1. High Representative Lajcak: Biased and Unprofessional

By Tarik Borogovac, Boston USA

The regular readers of this column know that until very recently we wholeheartedly supported High Representative Miroslav Lajcak. The Office of High Representative (OHR) wields the Bonn powers -- the only tool that can overcome the crippling ethnic and entity vetoes, which continue to ensure failure and misery in Bosnia. Mr. Lajcak, made strong statements that he would use all the tools at his disposal to push the reforms that strengthen Bosnia's state institutions, and to lead us into the EU. This was a very welcome attitude, especially since his predecessor, Mr. Christian Schwartz-Schilling, was criticized for employing a philosophy of non-interference, and allowing inflammatory statements to go unchallenged.

In the recent episode about parliamentary procedures, Mr. Lajcak did make a good decision, and prevailed in the face of strong opposition to it.

But we now recognize that we were wrong about Mr. Lajcak, after all, and we apologize to our readers. Mr. Lajcak has recently made several questionable decisions, and even a few very shocking public statements, which reveal lack of professionalism. In fact, some of his statements show personal bias and favoritism toward Mr. Dodik, Premier of the entity "Republic of the Serbs" (RS).

Let us first consider some of his statements made on March 14, and reported by the daily "Nezavisne Novine" from Banja Luka.

1. Mr. Lajcak stated that Mr. Dodik is the strongest political leader in Bosnia, and that he does not see any readiness of politicians in Sarajevo (i.e. Bosniak and Croat) to use the good influence of Mr. Dodik.

Our comment: Mr. Lajcak must have been particularly impressed by Mr. Dodik's strength just last week, when Mr. Dodik forbade the use of the Bonn powers
-- as we wrote in our last column. There has been no response by the OHR to that "decision" by Mr. Dodik, and it seems that we know why.

2. Mr. Lajcak also stated that Mr. Dodik has safeguarded peace and stability in Bosnia after the Kosovo independence declaration.

Our comment: Clearly, Mr. Lajcak is ignoring how Mr. Dodik's RS Government and the RS Parliament have responded to the Kosovo independence by making a law which states that the RS can declare independence if it chooses to, which is clearly in violation of the Dayton agreement, and could have caused, and still might cause violence. Contrast Mr. Lajcak's response with Mr. Schwartz-Schilling who was criticized for simply not punishing rhetoric about the RS right to secession to get out of hand in the media. Mr. Lajcak actually allows laws to be passed that state the same thing.

3. In the same interview Mr. Lajcak said: "Dodik is right when he says that he would like his coalition partners to recognize the RS, because they have the right to say: 'Here, we recognize the RS, and now enough of the talk about referendum and secession, because those are all children's stories, and we all know that.' If it is politically unacceptable for Bosniak politicians to say that: 'the RS is a reality' -- then something is wrong.
There is no secession, and everyone knows that, and they are just fooling the people".

Our comment: If such a recognition is so meaningless, why is Dodik insisting that the BiH Parliament must recognize the RS, and threatening with the referendum for RS independence otherwise? Why do Bosniak politicians feel that it is "politically unacceptable" to recognize the RS?

Dodik wants the formal recognition precisely because it would change the status of the RS significantly, cementing its legal existence and even allowing it to secede. Namely, the RS is currently an ethnic territory created by an international agreement, the Dayton agreement, as a concession to Milosevic and Karadzic. The Dayton agreement was never ratified by the Bosnian parliament, and its Annex IV, the Dayton Constitution, was never formally approved as a new constitution of the country. The implementation of the Annex IV constitution in Bosnia only depends on the good will and cooperation of all sides. Bosnia has the right to withdraw from Dayton, and so effectively end the RS at any time. If the RS violates the Dayton Agreement, for example by declaring independence, it will negate the only basis for its own existence. On the other hand, if the Bosnian Parliament confirms Annex IV as the Bosnian constitution, that act would replace Dayton as the basis for the RS, and failure to fulfill Dayton obligations could no longer put the RS into question. Dodik needs the recognition of the RS because without it, the talk of independence truly is just "childrens' stories". If the RS gets that recognition in the Bosnian Parliament, only then would the talk of a referendum and secession become serious.

Bosniak politicians do not dare to recognize the RS in parliament, because the RS is the most important issue for the Bosniak population, and it really would be political suicide to recognize it openly. Among Bosniaks, the existence of the RS is a very real reminder of the genocide committed to create it and ethnically cleanse it of Bosniaks and Croats. Srebrenica is our Aushwitz -- a very painful example in the Bosniak consciousness of the massive injustice that the RS military and police killed thousands of Bosniaks, and in that manner officially created Serb territories. The only reason that the Bosniak politicians ever get elected is because they claim that (A) they never confirmed the existence of the RS in Parliament, and (B) they fight for its abolishment. Although claim (B) is dubious, claim (A) is still technically correct.

Lajcak's argument that "the RS is a reality" is bunk. For a few years, Nazi Germany's occupation of Slovakia was a reality, also, but it was neither legal nor moral -- just like the RS. In connection to Nazi Germany, it has been famously said that forcing the victims of genocide to live with and accept the results of genocide is also an act of genocide. For Lajcak to say that "the Republic of the Serbs", and Srebrenica in it, is a reality that Bosniaks should accept, is morally indefensible.

4. In a speech the day before, on March 13, in Foca, RS, Mr. Lajcak denounced those who are blocking the passage of the new police laws in Parliament, calling them "guilty" of keeping Bosnia outside of the EU, and that their action shows an "unseen brazenness". Contrasting these statements to the manner in which he simply accepted the scrapping of the previous attempt to reform the police, at Mr. Dodik's request, shows partiality.

A little more context is necessary to make this point. The police law drafts, over which Mr. Lajcak is so strongly pressuring lawmakers now, do not respect the very three principles that the EU has set. For example, the EU requires state control of local police forces, and of the budget, yet these proposals instead would only create weak bodies that only coordinate (not control) the entity police structures. We note here that some parliamentarians from the SDA and SDP parties have opposed these laws not only because they do not fulfill any of the three principles, but because they also represent a violation of principle (A) above, i.e. they are an implicit recognition of the entity police forces, including the RS police, which committed the Srebrenica genocide.

In contrast, recall that during Mr. Ashdown's time, the parliaments of both entities and of the state passed a police reform law, under which a commission of police experts was formed, and was led by EUPM chief Vincenzo Coppola, to make binding decisions on the future police structures in Bosnia. After more than a year of work, the commission gave its binding decision, which was comprehensive and did truly respect the three principles, but which Mr. Dodik did not like. Mr. Lajcak consented to Mr. Dodik's request that the original deal should be renegotiated, setting the process back for years.

5. Finally, we have often written about the citizenship law that will (in 2011) take Bosnian citizenship away from hundreds of thousands of citizens, mostly Bosniaks and Croats who have settled in western countries after being "cleansed" from areas that are now in the RS. Recognizing the simple truth that the RS politicians like Mr. Dodik have not allowed the changing of this law because they have an interest in taking those citizenships away, the ethnic Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency Zeljko Komsic asked, in a letter, the high representative to modify that law using the Bonn powers. According to Mr. Komsic, Mr. Lajcak responded that he is aware that the citizenship law is discriminatory, but that he will not change it.

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Sunday, March 2, 2008

NKRBH - #528 INTL - Serbia Exports "Kosovo Crisis" to Bosnia and Herzegovina

National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina

ONLINE NEWSLETTER - International

No. 528

March 2, 2008

http://republic-bosnia-herzegovina.com/

CONTENT

1. Serbia Exports Kosovo Crisis to Bosnia and Herzegovina

1.1 Dodik Unilaterally Takes away Bonn Powers from Europe

1.2 Kosovo is not a legal precedent in international law

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1. Serbia Exports "Kosovo Crisis" to Bosnia and Herzegovina

1.1 Dodik Unilaterally Takes away Bonn Powers from Europe


Republic of the Serbs (RS) Premier Milorad Dodik, dissatisfied with the decision of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) that the Office of Europe's High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina will to hold on to the Bonn powers, decided to take away those powers himself.

Namely, upon his return to Banja Luka from Bruxelles, Mr. Dodik declared to the press that the RS will reject any attempt by the OHR to use the Bonn Powers: "Absolutely, it will not be allowed, that any individual becomes subject to the Bonn powers of the High Representative, except those involved with war crimes and those being processed by the court system, nor will we accept the imposing of any laws or regulations by the OHR."

This is a huge challenge to the authority of OHR and PIC. If the OHR and PIC simply allow such statements to be made without consequences, it would become very clear that the Dayton process no longer applies. Even by simply allowing such rhetoric in the media, the international guarantors of peace in Bosnia would look weak and foolish in the eyes of the free world, and especially in the eyes of the Bosnian people, victims of genocide, who have thus far put their trust in the same international community.

More importantly, this course of action by the RS government represents a unilateral withdrawal from obligations assumed under the Dayton agreement.

The OHR and PIC have two choices for how to respond. They could try to salvage Dayton and call the bluff of the RS, by using the Bonn powers to remove Mr. Dodik. Or they could accept that Dayton has failed and that this decision by Premier Dodik is just a formal confirmation of that.

If the PIC does give up on Dayton, what becomes the legal situation in Bosnia? Do the entities become states? The answer is no. The Dayton Agreement is not different from any other legal agreement in that if the signers withdraw from it, or refuse to adhere to it, the matter reverts to status quo ante, or the last legal state that had existed before the agreement was signed. In the case of the Dayton agreement, status quo ante is the constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without ethnic entities.

It is important to clarify further this question. This week's PIC conclusion -- an English language document that has been posted on the OHR website -- states that Bosnia's: "... territorial integrity is guaranteed by the Dayton Peace Agreement". This statement is interpreted by some malicious Bosnian politicians and media that the territorial integrity of Bosnia is ONLY guaranteed by the Dayton Peace Agreement. The implication of that false interpretation is that Bosnia and Herzegovina will cease to exist when Dayton inevitably fails. But the PIC statement above is just a simple paraphrasing of the Dayton Agreement Annex 4. Article I.1., which states that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not ended or begun in the agreement, but continued with a modified internal organization, and that the agreement does not put into question its internationally recognized borders. Therefore, if Dayton fails, or if the signers withdraw from it, Bosnia and Herzegovina will revert to status quo ante -- a state within its internationally recognized borders, and without the ethnic entities.

Both Raffi Gregorian, Deputy High Representative to Bosnia, and Charles English, U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina have both confirmed this in media interviews this past week. Mr. Gregorian said, in Banja Luka's "Nezavisne Novine" that calling into question the Dayton Agreement is calling into question the existence of the RS itself. Mr. English similarly linked the existence of RS to Dayton, while emphasizing that Bosnia and Herzegovina existed before and independently of Dayton.

This is another attempt at blackmail of the international community by Serbia and Serbia’s proxy in Bosnia – the RS. Hopefully, this time the EU and the world will not give in to blackmail.

Finally, we note that Serbia has been using Kosovo’s independence to both inflame the militant nationalist sentiment inside the RS, and to argue for the separation of RS from Bosnia. Yet, the connection and similarity that Serbia cites between the cases of Kosovo and the RS are not grounded in facts. The following is a brief explanation of the legal argument for the independence of Kosovo, from which it is clear why it is a special case that cannot be compared to the status of RS.


1.2 Kosovo is not a legal precedent in international law

According to the last legal constitution of Yugoslavia, the autonomous province of Kosovo had the same right of self-determination that all the Yugoslav republics used in order to gain internationally recognized independence. In fact, it was Milosevic's forcible and illegal change of the constitution regarding Kosovo's autonomy that led the republics to declare independence in the first place. It was illegal, because it violated constitutionally proscribed procedure for amending the constitution.

Later, Serbia’s military attempted to forcibly remove the two million ethnic Albanian citizens of Kosovo by replicating the campaign of violence, rape, intimidation and murder which had been successfully used to create the RS as an ethnically clean Serb territory on half of Bosnia. It did not succeed in Kosovo largely because of NATO intervention.

Therefore, Serbia never had the legal right to hold Kosovo, and a strong moral argument exists for independence of Kosovo.

Regardless of what people think of Bush administration policies in other parts of the world, recognizing the declaration of independence by Kosovo's parliament is one they absolutely got right.

NCRB&H