ZAGREB, March 15, 2018 – The United States will not support the establishment of a third entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina or any other type of reconfiguration of the country that would be based on ethnic principles, the US Embassy in Sarajevo said on Thursday.
In a special statement forwarded to the local media, the US Embassy responded to a repeated offer by Serb entity president Milorad Dodik for the establishment of a third, Croat-majority entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In an interview with the Bosnia and Herzegovina edition of the Večernji List daily, Dodik said a third, Croat entity would be the best way to defuse the current internal tensions and guarantee equality for the country’s Croat community, but on the strict condition the Serb entity was preserved within its current borders.
Dodik proposed that the new entity be made by dividing the Croat-Muslim Federation entity into a Croat and a Muslim part.
The position of the United States on this matter is well known and remains unchanged. The US is committed to the principles of the Dayton peace agreement and to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a democratic, multiethnic, sovereign and independent country with two entities, three constituent peoples and unquestionable territorial integrity, the embassy said in the statement.
It resolutely dismissed any notion of further divisions within Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly those based on ethnic criteria.
The Croat chairman of the three-member Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dragan Čović, who leads the HDZ BiH party, told the N1 broadcaster on Wednesday that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be reorganised so that Croats could be equal to the other two ethnic groups, announcing that this would definitely happen, “in three months or three years.”
“It does not have to be an entity, it can be any federal unit where (Croats) will enjoy equality,” said Čović.
