Editorial from Sarajevo weekly BH Dani expressing outrage at current EU and US strong-arm attempts to 'resolve' the constitutional impasse in Bosnia-Herzegovina on terms acceptable to Belgrade and Banja Luka, but deeply injurious to the country's own essential interests

The pompously announced Butmir negotiations between Bosnian leaders, conducted under European and American patronage, have ended in a debacle. Given that the proposed package of Butmir ‘solutions’ was little more than a rehash, on the part of Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt and the artless American duo ambassadors Clifford Bond and Charles English, of the earlier failed Prud initiative [November 2008}, the outcome surprised no one. The only surprise was the insolence shown by the international mediators.

To begin with, the package lists explicitly the competencies (defence, indirect taxation and intelligence services) that have already been transferred to the central state and therefore cannot be alienated from it. The trouble is that such listing diminishes the import of the article of the Bosnian constitution that explicitly speaks of the possibility that entity competencies can be transferred to the centre. For if a precedent were to be established, as implied by this package, that transferred competencies must eventually be explicitly listed in the constitution, then all transfers of competencies would become negotiable. The side that advocates strengthening the central state would then be forced to negotiate again - make new concessions - over competencies that have already been agreed on, and for which they were forced to offer concessions at the time.

The question of whether Bosnia should have a president and two vice-presidents, as contained in the Butmir package, or whether (as things stand now) there are three presidents of whom one is chairman, is not so important. More important is the new proposal that members of the presidency be elected indirectly by the central parliament. This would make Bosnia the only country in the world in which no executive governmental institution has original, elected legitimacy. In all the countries in the region - Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, etc. - presidents are elected by direct vote. Given that in the Federation the president and vice-presidents are indirectly elected, only the RS president would enjoy original elected legitimacy. It is clear whose elements of sovereignty are being diminished in this way, especially in the context of an increasingly radical RS secessionist policy.

The hypocrisy of the international authors of the Butmir package is particularly visible in their attitude to the questions of entity voting, and the division of central state property. Although both houses of the US Congress, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament are unanimous in the view that entity voting should be eliminated, because it represents the main obstacle to the functioning of the Bosnian state, the international mediators made no mention of it. They have justified this approach as a pragmatic device needed to accelerate Bosnia’s Euro-Atlantic integration. But this subterfuge was only a few days earlier unmasked by the European Commission’s annual report on Bosnia’s progress, which points to entity voting as a key obstacle to Bosnia’s ability to meet the criteria for joining the EU.

As for the division of state property, the proposal contained in the package is based on the approach that the hapless Sulejman Tihić accepted at Prud, and subsequently rejected. The proposal involves disinheriting the central state: i.e., giving away property which according to the Bosnian constitution, the international agreement on the division of property of the former Yugoslavia, and a whole series of judgments handed down by Bosnian courts, belongs to the central state. This proposal would provide the entities, and especially RS, with a greater degree of statehood than that enjoyed by Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It is obvious that the Butmir package was designed in accordance with ‘what is acceptable to Dodik’ rather than ‘what Bosnia-Herzegovina needs’. This was made evident in the leaked draft of a document penned by the insolent and self-important tandem of US ambassadors Bond and English which insists: ‘The reforms would not go beyond the issues which the Serb parties were ready to support in 2006.’ The positions of the Bosniak and Croat parties are not even mentioned in the draft.

Particularly brazen is the attempt to bribe the ‘Bosniak side’. One of the working documents presented at Butmir offers, in return for it accepting the proposed (and unacceptable) solutions, ‘incentives related to EU integration, including an accelerated entry into the European visa-free system once the technical conditions are fulfilled’. Before the Butmir conference, Bosnia was constantly reassured that it would join Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia in the visa-free arrangement as soon as ‘technical conditions’ were met. This is no longer certain. It is evident that a certain deputy to the European Parliament knew what she was talking about when she described as ‘blackmail’ the approach of fellow MEP Anna Maria Corazza [married to Carl Bildt] to the suspension of Schengen visas for Bosnia’s citizens.

A few days before the start of the Butmir negotiations Milorad Dodik, speaking to the cameras, advised the High Representative Valentin Inzko - who had warned that the international community would no longer tolerate those leaders who are trying to undermine Bosnia-Herzegovina - to go jump in the lake. At the Butmir conference table, one of the RS negotiators, Milorad Laktašenko, compared inter-ethnic marriages with gay unions, both being in his view unnatural. The assembled representatives of the Western democracies listened to this in silence. Only afterwards, on meeting them in the corridors, did they apologise to some of the Bosnian negotiators for ‘Dodik’s fascism’. Esteemed readers of Dani, I don’t know where you stand, but I must admit I find authentic fascists less repulsive than the authentic dummies of Western democracies engaged in making deals with fascists.

Editorial translated from the independent Sarajevo weekly BH Dani, 23 October 2009

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