Military 'threat' to Serbia prompts diplomatic efforts

23 January 2010, The Irish Times

Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor has sought to ease tensions with Serbia, after her president said he would send troops into neighbouring Bosnia if the leader of its Serb region carried out a threat to hold a referendum on independence.

The spat raised temperatures around the region, at a time when Croatia and Serbia are at odds over mutual lawsuits filed in the International Court of Justice, and efforts to deepen co-operation between Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Muslim-Croat Federation have hit deadlock.

Stjepan Mesic told Croatian reporters that if Bosnian Serb premier Milorad Dodik held a vote on Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia, he would “militarily cut off the corridor in Bosnia’s Posavina region” – an action that would split Republika Srpska in two.
Mr Dodik called Mr Mesic’s comment “a concrete threat . . . a man who cannot hide his hatred towards the Serb people”.

In Belgrade, Serb president Boris Tadic also condemned Mr Mesic’s remarks, and said he would complain about them in last night’s planned speech to the United Nations Security Council.
Mr Tadic called his Croatian counterpart’s statement “direct warmongering and a threat to regional security . . . It is a threat to the safety of all people and all nations in the region.”
Mr Mesic, who is about to step down after serving two terms in office, sought to calm the escalating row, characterising his remarks as “a political message and not a declaration of war” and “a message that we have certain obligations” under the Dayton peace deal that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.
He said the deal “guarantees the existence of Bosnia. Croatia cannot accept that Bosnia falls apart.”
Mr Dodik plans to hold a referendum on Bosnian Serbs’ support for Dayton, which he claims is under threat from western-backed efforts to strengthen Bosnia’s federal powers at the expense of its ethnic “entities”, Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

Analysts say many local Serbs fear an integrated Bosnia because it raises the prospect of the country eventually being dominated by its majority Muslims, who were the greatest victims of the war, and that Muslims and Croats suspect nationalists like Mr Dodik still harbour dreams of creating a “Greater Serbia”.
“I don’t think carrying on with controversies is good because it increases tensions,” Ms Kosor said yesterday.
“Regardless of the extremely difficult past, we must continue living in the spirit of good neighbourly relations.”