The United States on Monday imposed economic sanctions on several officials in the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska accused of undermining the 1995 agreements that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia with a recently enacted law.
The four officials targeted "bear responsibility for having encouraged the adoption of this legislation that threatens the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement" that ended the war in former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), said the US Treasury Department in a statement.
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Ministers targeted
These sanctions target the President of the Assembly of Republika Srpska, Nenad Stevandic, Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic, Minister of Justice Milos Bukejlovic and Zeljka Cvijanovic, Serb member of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska and close to the Kremlin, is not among those targeted. Economic sanctions against it have already been taken in 2017 and 2022 by Washington, for its measures to obstruct the implementation of the Dayton agreements.
On 9th July it promulgated a law, previously approved by Parliament, suspending the Bosnian Serb's recognition of the judgments of the Bosnian Constitutional Court, which apply in theory throughout the country. Under the Dayton Accords, Bosnia was split into two: a Serb entity - the Republika Srpska - and a Croat-Muslim federation. "This action threatens the stability, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the hard-won peace underpinned by the Dayton Peace Agreement," U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement.
Western countries, including the United States, had expressed their opposition to the law, worried that tensions would escalate further in the Balkan country. One of the sanctioned officials, Nenad Stevandic, reacted on Twitter, renamed X, that he considered these sanctions a "reward for consistency, firmness and not giving in to blackmail and threats from those who are considered omnipotent."
A spokesman for Dodik's SNSD party, which holds the majority of seats in the Republika Srpska Assembly, called the US decision "shameful and hypocritical". "No sanctions will prevent us from doing our job," spokesman Radovan Kovacevic told local broadcaster RTRS. Milorad Dodik also promulgated another law on 9th July, de facto rejecting the authority of the International High Representative in the Bosnian Serb entity, Christian Schmidt. The latter, which has discretionary powers to annul or impose laws and dismiss elected officials, tried to thwart the implementation of these two texts by declaring them illegal in a decree. Mr. Dodik ignored it. He assured in a recent letter that the High Representative "does not exist".
