US Scraps Aid For Bosnian Serb Party due to stance on Kosovo independence
04 March 2008
The Prime Minister of the Bosnian Serb entity will no longer receive aid from three United States-based funding programmes, local media reported Monday.
According to Sarajevo-based Federal television, Bosnia's US Embassy said Milorad Dodik and his Alliance of Independent Social democrats, SNSD, were no longer entitled to aid from the programmes, which include USAID.
“The SNSD does not fulfill the USAID’s criteria for helping political parties in consolidation and development of parliamentary democracies,” the Embassy said in a statement.
Dodik, the Prime Minister of Bosnia's smaller Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, RS, strongly opposes the independence of Kosovo and has signalled the Bosnian Serb entity could opt for more sovereignty within the Federation.
He has recently criticised a statement by the Brussels-based Peace Implementation Council, PIC, that the country's entities have no right to secede. The body is responsible for assessing Bosnia's compliance with the 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended a three-year bloody war and left Bosnia divided between Serb and Muslim-Croat entities.
Their statement came in light of violent protests by Bosnian Serbs against Kosovo's independence.
Dodik argues that since Kosovo's declaration of independence, “the Serbian entity is going through a difficult period which requires tranquility and security,” while an alliance of non-governmental organisations of Serb war veterans and prisoners of war SPONA, which organised protests against Kosovo’s independence, went a step further, saying that RS “has the legitimate right to a referendum on its status, regardless of the council’s declaration.”
The PIC warned that “the international community will keep necessary instruments to oppose the destructive tendencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina and it will not allow the undermining of the Dayton peace accord.
Source: index. hr / Balkan Insight
