The EU announced plans to send peacekeepers to Bosnia after the nation’s top court suspended laws adopted by its ethnic Serb regional entity.
Reserve peacekeepers arrived in Bosnia on Wednesday amid rising tensions in the country, a day after NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte reaffirmed support for the country’s territorial integrity and peace.
Italian and Czech military personnel touched down at Sarajevo airport and were greeted by the EU force in Bosnia, known as EUFOR. Romanian troops, helicopters and military supplies will arrive in the coming days.
Rutte had pledged NATO’s “unwavering” support for Bosnia’s territorial integrity after a series of Bosnian Serb moves raised tensions nearly 30 years after the end of a bloody war.
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.
Bosnia’s state-level prosecutors issued arrest warrants on Wednesday for three top Bosnian Serb officials – including Dodik.
Dodik, who has previously said he does not recognise the country’s state-level prosecutor’s office, has rejected the warrant’s validity and any attempts at his arrest, and said he will not go to Sarajevo for questioning.
His 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.
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