Presidents Of Serbia, Turkey Say Planning To Meet With BiH Authorities Amid Power Crisis

BELGRADE/ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th January, 2022) Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday that a trilateral meeting with the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) leaders could be held in the near future to defuse the tensions in the leadership of the former Yugoslav republic.

Earlier in the day, the Serbian president started his visit to Turkey and already had a closed meeting with his Turkish colleague. Among other things, they discussed the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities forming it.

"I am sure that we will soon have an opportunity to respond with our hospitality and expect that, esteemed President (Erdogan), you will be present at a bilateral or maybe trilateral meeting in Belgrade in the coming months," Vucic said in his speech, broadcast by Serbian news agency Tanjug.

Erdogan, for his part, pointed out the importance of cooperating with the international community to overcome the crisis in BiH and avoiding steps that could undermined the country's territorial integrity.

"After the election that is coming up in Serbia, we would like to bring together leaders of this tripartite group (Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats and Serbs) and hold a meeting," Erdogan said during a press conference with Vucic, expresing the hope that this meeting could produce measures to safeguard the territorial integrity of BiH.

Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed independence and the Bosnian War erupted between Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croatians. The war was put to an end by the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which formed two autonomous entities within BiH - Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina � governed by a collective presidency that is formed by three members representing the country's Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian populations. The state is headed by one of the presidency's members on a rotational basis.

In 2021, Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina's three-person presidency, threatened to withdraw Republika Srpska from the country's institutions such as the armed forces, judiciary and tax agency, and form parallel institutions.

On January 5, the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control announced that the United States imposed new sanctions on Dodik, citing corrupt activities that undermine the "stability and territorial integrity" of BiH.