US sanctions against Bosnian Serbs to be ignored

Banja Luka (AP):

Serbia will ignore US sanctions recently imposed on top Bosnian Serb officials for undermining a 1995 peace agreement that ended a war that left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless, the Serbian president said Friday.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the sanctioned ethnic Serb officials from neighbouring Bosnia will still be welcome in Serbia.

“The Republic of Serbia will treat the sanctions as if they do not exist,” Vucic said, during a visit to the Serb region of Bosnia. “It is hard, but that’s the only possible decision.”

The four Bosnian Serb officials sanctioned by the US Treasury on Monday include Zeljka Cvijanovic, a Serb member of the tripartite collective Bosnian presidency, as well as the prime minister of the Serb entity in Bosnia, Radovan Viskovic. The separatist leader of the Bosnian Serb entity, Milorad Dodik, has earlier been sanctioned by the United States.

The four are alleged to have taken part in drafting a law that US and other international officials say undermines the unity of Bosnia by ignoring the decisions of the country’s constitutional court.

The Bosnian Serb parliament has passed the law to not recognise or implement any decisions by Bosnia’s multi-ethnic Constitutional Court, which is seen as another of the leadership’s attempts to separate from the fragile Bosnian federation.

Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader, mirrored Vucic’s allegations at a joint news conference, saying the US sanctions are aimed against Serbs in general and that Washington has always led “anti-Serb” policies.

REJECTED

The US Embassy in Sarajevo rejected such allegations, saying in a statement that they were a conspiracy theory about “some imaginary anti-Serb policy”.

“The truth is that the United States Government sanctioned these individuals because their actions threatened the stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not because of their ethnicity,” the statement said.

The Bosnian War started in 1992, pitting mostly Muslim Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats against each other. It ended with the US-sponsored Dayton accords that created two regions, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation.

“When the most powerful country in the world imposes sanctions against you, it is something that we should be worried about,” Vucic said, adding that the “inappropriate and underserved” sanctions “produce wrong effects”.

The US recently also imposed sanctions on the pro-Russian head of Serbia’s security agency, Aleksandar Vulin, accusing him of involvement in illegal arms shipments, drug trafficking and misuse of public office.

There are widespread fears that Serbia, an ally of Russia, could inflame tensions in the Balkans to divert at least some of the world attention from the war in Ukraine.