Bosnian Serb Assembly’s Deputy Speaker Quits Ahead of Sacking

Bosniak politician Senad Bratic quit as vice-speaker of the assembly in Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, RS, on Wednesday - after the party to which he belongs passed a controversial declaration at its recent party congress that landed him in hot political water.

"I did nothing wrong in my job … [but] am submitting my irrevocable resignation from the post of Vice President [of the RS assembly] as I don't want this to turn into a nationalist narrative targeting Bosniaks," Bratic told a press conference in Banja Luka on Wednesday.

At its congress on Saturday, the mainly Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, adopted long-term goals that were implicitly centralising and unitaristic - and which immediately outraged Bosnian Serb leaders who prize the autonomy of the RS - one of two entities in the country.

The SDA goals included, among other things, establishment of a republic with only "state, regional and local governments", and affirming a single "Bosnian language" as the "common identity of all of Bosnia's citizens".

The declaration made no mention of the two highly autonomous entities in Bosnia that emerged from the Dayton peace talks after the end of the 1992-5 war.

The document triggered a strong reaction from Bosnian Serb leaders and caused a new political stir all over the country.

Bosnian Serb leaders have long accused Bosniaks of aiming to do away with the entities and so dominate the country, using their numerical superiority to both Serbs and Croats.

The ruling party in the RS, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, called an urgent session of the assembly that accused deputy speaker Bratic of having supported the document.

Its proposal said that "Senad Bratic...