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BRUSSELS, March 15 (FENA) - BiH Presidency Chairman Željko Komšić warned the European Parliament today of Russia's malign influence in the Western Balkans and BiH. Namely, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament held a meeting today with members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina to discuss current challenges facing the country.
According to the members of this body, the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is increasingly tense, and nationalist and separatist rhetoric continues to threaten the peace, stability and integrity of the country, and disrupt the functioning of its state institutions.
Today, the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Željko Komšić, first addressed the delegates, thanking them for their interest and opportunity to present their views on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the immediate vicinity.
Speaking about the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he emphasized the malign Russian influence on the Western Balkans and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and noted that Russian aggression against neighboring Ukraine threatens the security of the entire European continent.
“Now the long-standing Russian policy of "frozen conflict" in the Western Balkans, as well as in my country, can and should finally be understood and accepted as a security challenge,” Komšić emphasized.
The Opinion of the European Commission on Bosnia and Herzegovina's application for membership in the European Union from May 2019 is if not a "revolutionary document" for BiH, then at least a document that is immediately after the Dayton-Paris Peace Agreement which stopped the war in BiH , and that document, says Komšić, represents a political and historical crossroads for BiH.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is faced with a choice. In fact, BiH has three possibilities, three ways to move from the political crossroads where it stands at the moment. The first choice is to choose the path that leads to the implementation of recommendations and 14 priorities from that Opinion, which is also my choice,” underlined Komšić.
As a second choice for BiH, he said that everything remains as it is now, and that is a state of latent conflict that is unbearable for BiH citizens because BiH is in constant blockade of institutions and ethnic tensions while ethnic divisions try to present themselves as a permanent category of BiH society, and insecurity, uncertainty and corruption lead to mass emigration, mostly of young people from BiH.
He adds that more and more international factors that are monitoring the situation in the Western Balkans and Bosnia and Herzegovina are becoming or have become aware of this fact and speak of the need for change and in light of current events on the European continent, recalls that Russia, until the aggression against Ukraine, was the biggest advocate of this situation in BiH for a simple reason - it was a state of "frozen conflict" that suited Russia as a source of problems for NATO and the European Union.
There is, he emphasizes, the third choice for BiH, and that is to move backwards in relation to the current situation, and the result of such an election would certainly be a conflict that will certainly occur in that case, and the moment of conflict will depend on whether BiH continued in its constitutional and legal system through ethnic divisions.
He reminded that the current predominantly ethnically based constitutional-legal structure, with a partial civic approach, which is based on the concept of constituent peoples, is already the source of political conflicts that are best seen in the blockade of the state.
The ethnically structured electoral system of elections in one part of the country that is currently being tried to impose is the definitive beginning of the dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he underlined, with a very uncertain outcome. This is achieved by violating the sovereignty of BiH's neighbors through the concept of care of neighboring countries for members of the people who are in fact indigenous citizens of BiH.
“This concept goes to the extent that neighboring countries openly interfere in the internal affairs of BiH. If this looks like the situation in Lugansk and Donetsk, Russia's policy and what that policy has led to, you are right, it is the same aggressive concept of one state that is trying to rule another state,” says Komšić.
He points out that the only difference in relation to such a Russian approach, for now, is that neighboring countries are not trying to achieve this with armed aggression, but in BiH they have already done so from 1992 to the end of 1995, which has been proven and confirmed by numerous judgments of international courts.
He believes that it is necessary to remind of the "neutrality" of the member of the Presidency of BiH, Milorad Dodik, on the issue of Russian aggression against Ukraine, because such neutrality is identical to complicity.
(FENA) A. B.
