I think that the RS leadership understands that. Again, even though they might want independence, they realise that there is no chance that the international community will accept that or that the Bosniaks will accept that. Now what they are trying to do is carve up as much autonomy as possible for Republika Srpska. This creates a problem because when they try to carve up autonomy they make it more difficult for central institutions--so the institutions of the whole country of Bosnia and Herzegovina--to function.
Bosnian Serbs have expressed that they feel they are shouldering most of the responsibility for the war. The Serbs do feel like they are being blamed for the bulk of the war.
And there is a reason for that, because most of the crimes were against Bosniaks, and the reality is that Serbs did participate more in those types of crimes. The problem is that the RS leadership hasn't publicly, in any way, asked for forgiveness, especially this current leadership.
Dodic hasn't made any gestures towards the Bosniaks to show that he is sorry for what happened during the war. We think that that would be a very big step. President Tadic of Serbia has made those kind ofstatements, so it would be very helpful if the Serbs did that. It would diminish tensions and it would help avoid the situation where the war is still perpetuated through these memories and lack of forgiveness.
How have conditions in Bosnia changed since the end of the war? And in what ways has the impact of the war lived on? I think the situation has improved dramatically in Republika Srpska.
You do have a large number of Bosniaks who have returned to their villages. You have mosques that have been rebuilt, churches that have been rebuilt, so on the surface things look much better. But there has not been much success at having a peace and reconciliation truth commission or any of these kind of psychological social mechanisms that would help people get over the war traumas.
Other than acknowledge and apologize for their role in the war, what else could the leadership of RS do to lessen tensions? I think that if they did that, it would go a long way to help reduce the tensions at the local level. I would not say that the tensions at the local level are actually that high.
What they should be doing is working through the domestic institutions that exist to resolve their differences. For example, they should be going to the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia Herzegovina and they should be going to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia Herzegovina and resolving their differences that way. What ended up happening now with the latest referendum threat is that they went to the European Union and the European Union was able to start a dialogue between all the sides to talk about judiciary reform.
I hope that the EU will continue with that kind of policy. On the more war-related issues, I would say that obviously RS should stop having big commemorative events or setting up statues that herald what happened during the war, which for them might be victories, but for the rest of the population, for the Bosniak population, is still very traumatic.
On the other hand, they should support the more positive type of events: actions and events that can reestablish the historical truth of what happened during the war. It is highly unlikely that the RS will secede or that the Bosniaks will attempt to eliminate it, but if its Serb leaders continue driving every conflict with Sarajevo to the brink, as they have done repeatedly to date, they risk disaster.
RS also suffers from its own internal problems, notably a culture of impunity for political and economic elites and a lingering odour of wartime atrocities. Its leadership, especially its president, Milorad Dodik, needs to compromise with Sarajevo on state building and implement urgent entity-level reforms.
The RS threatened a referendum early in that could have provided support for a Serb walkout of Bosnian institutions and brought BiH back to the brink of war. The situation was defused in June, when the European Union EU offered a dialogue process on the judiciary, whose reform the RS was demanding. The process will be long and painstaking, but RS can achieve effective change only by working through the BiH Parliamentary Assembly and Constitutional Court.
The international community has wrestled with RS for years. Given a free choice, many in the entity would prefer independence, but this is unacceptable to the rest of Bosnia and the international community. The RS is too weak to fight its way to independence and would not achieve international recognition as a state. Republika Srpska [Serb Republic] is a constituent part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an internationally recognized state.
Tensions have flared in Bosnia since the Constitutional Court ruled in February that unclaimed agricultural land automatically became the property of the central Bosnian state rather than Republika Srpska -- contradicting Bosnian Serb law. Lawmakers in Republika Srpska RS , Bosnia's Serb entity, have given a day deadline for the reform of Bosnia's Constitutional Court, threatening secession following the court's rejection of a move by Bosnian Serbs to claim federal agricultural land.
During an extraordinary session on 17 February , Bosnian Serb lawmakers voted to suspend the work of all RS representatives in Bosnia's institutions until the federal parliament terminates the mandates of the three international members of the Constitutional Court. We will see each other in 60 days.
His statements have touched on self-determination as well as seeking to make links between Republika Srpska and developments elsewhere in Europe. BiH will not survive! When will it fall apart? The fundamental problem in Bosnia remains that the state lacks legitimacy. Serbs, after years of attacking the Dayton Accords, have grudginly acknowledged Dayton's entity-based structures and weak central state. But, over the years, they have sought to roll back reforms designed to make Dayton work and advance Bosnia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations, arguing that such reforms were not explicitly provided for in Dayton.
Many Serbs would prefer the dissolution of Bosnia in favor of the independence of the RS. Even the most enlightened Bosnian Serbs continue to demand that the RS's status remains unchanged, i. The Republika Srpska has a centralized government and is divided directly into 62 municipalities. The official language is Serbian. It covers an area of The territory is grouped in two main regions, North-Western part of Srpska consisting of Banja Luka Krajina region and Posavina region , and Eastern part of Srpska consisting of Semberija and Majevica region, Drina region, Sarajevo and Romanija region and Herzegovina region.
The climate in general is the continental one with long snowy winters and dry hot summers, with the exception to the Herzegovina region which enjoys the benefits of the Mediterranean climate. Republika Srpska leaders continue to challenge the Dayton Agreement with rhetoric that advocates Republika Srpska independence or secession for the Republika Srpska.
State-level institutions are very limited in their capacities, and there are only a few such institutions that have national-level competencies and authorities that merit support including the Ministry of Justice and State Parliament. As well, competencies shared between the state and Entities are configured such that there are inadequate mechanisms to ensure Entity compliance with state or joint policy.
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