(AKI) - A Muslim member of Bosnia's rotating presidency has provoked a controversy after demanding the abolition of the Serb entity, Republika Srpska, and correcting what he called 'war errors', during his speech before the United Nations. Haris Silajdzic, who currently chairs Bosnia's three-man rotating state presidency, told the General Assembly on Tuesday that the RS was "created by genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina".
Silajdzic also added that the "UN should correct the errors made during the war in Bosnia and send a clear message that the genocide will not be rewarded".
The statement provoked immediate condemnation by Bosnian Serb leaders who called for an emergency meeting of the RS Parliament to take a position on Silajdzic's speech. The session was set for 7 October, but RS opposition parties said it was an intolerably late date.
According to the Dayton peace accords which ended the 1992-1995 civil war, Bosnia was divided into two entities, the RS and a Muslim-Croat Federation with most state prerogatives. But majority Muslims and the international community have been pushing for the abolition of entities and the creation of a strong central government.
RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said Silajdzic's speech represented his own views, and not those of the presidency, comprising Muslim, Serb and Croat representatives. Dodik accused Silajdzic of "trying to devalue any attempts of a consensus in Bosnia-Herzegovina", saying Muslim political parties have started "an orchestrated campaign to destroy the Dayton agreement and the RS".
Silajdzic has spearheaded the campaign since the International Court of Justice ruled last year that Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide in the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995, when up to 8,000 Muslims were killed.
Dodik responded that Bosnian Serbs would not accept the abolition of the RS or revision of the Dayton accords, but would sooner resort to a referendum on independence.
Silajdzic, on the other hand, said that the present situation amounted to "ethnic apartheid in Bosnia-Herzegovina" and was intolerable.
The high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, criticised Bosnian political leaders of tending only to their parties' interests, instead of those of the state. "I have seen only twice in my life the atmosphere like the one between Sarajevo and Banja Luka (RS's capital)," said the Slovak diplomat. "The first time it was in relations between Bratislava and Prague, and the second between Belgrade and Podgorica," Lajcak said, referring to the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia and Serbia and Montenegro.
"We all know how it ended," Lajcak concluded.