Bosnian Serb leader accused of risking war by breaking up Bosnia-Herzegovina has likened himself to David Cameron and his attempts to renegotiate Britain's EU membership terms before the EU referendum.
Milorad Dodik, a Serb member of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, said if he was defeated in his demand to take back control of the tax administration, judiciary and army, the country's potential collapse and the exit of the Republika Srpska entity from it was only on the cards.
Local politicians backed a resolution under which the entity would unilaterally take back the powers if necessary because of Dodik's comments in the Republika Srpska s assembly, firing the starting shot of what he intends to be six months of negotiations with the Croat and Muslim Bosniak leadership over a new arrangement.
Dodik said he was willing to compromise on elements of his plans but that a new constitution would be put to a referendum and that the Republika Srpska would be forced to leave if his main demands were not met.
He dismissed criticism and said he was trying to avoid a dramatic break up. Dodik's speech to the assembly, he said, had drawn on Cameron's speech to the Assembly in 2013 in which the UK Prime Minister had set out demands for new terms of Britain's membership with the EU.
In this speech, I replaced Great Britain sic with Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina with the European Union, Dodik said.
At the time, Cameron said that if you bring some powers away from the EU to Britain would lead to a new settlement that would help him win the EU referendum in 2017.
Even from fellow Serb nationalists, Dodik faced criticism in the assembly about the manner in which he was pursuing his goals despite Dodik claiming to be merely trying to reverse the centralisation of powers in favour of the central Bosnian state.
Mirko Arovi, the leader of the Serb Democratic Party, said Dodik posed a direct threat to peace and that the takeover of these competencies can't be carried out without war arovi, the party founded by Radovan Karad i, who is currently serving a 40 year sentence for genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Bosnian constitution was established in 1995 by the Dayton peace accord, which ended the bloody regional war that followed the separation of Yugoslavia.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is made up of two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, consisting predominantly of Bosniak Muslims and Croats and the Serbian Republika Srpska. The three-member presidency of Bosnia is held by representatives of those three main ethnic groups.
In 1997, substantial powers of lawmaking were granted to the office of the high representative OHR in charge of implementing the deal.
Dodik has claimed that powers have become increasingly centralised, and that the OHR plays an undemocratic and oversized role in Bosnian Serb affairs.
He told the assembly that let s determine what Bosnia-Herzegovina needs and what it needs to stop doing. The institutions and their parliaments should have greater significance because they are a true source of democracy, legitimacy and responsibility in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnia-Herzegovina is moving in a direction that we don't agree with. We do not allow interference in our jurisdiction. Since defying Bosnia's constitution in 2017, Dodik has been banned from traveling to the US or accessing assets under its jurisdiction, marking the date in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs declared their own state in Bosnia.
He said last month he was not indifferent to threats of further sanctions from the US, the EU and the European governments, but added he was not elected to be a coward. He claimed that a cut in funding from the EU would be made up of backing from China and Russia. Dodik visited Vladimir Putin last week in the Kremlin.