Bosnia's High Representative: Serbs Must Respect Court

High Representative Valentin Inzko on Wednesday called on the Bosnian Serb leadership to accept a recent Constitutional Court ruling that the annual public holiday commemorating the founding of Republika Srpska is unconstitutional because it discriminates against other ethnicities.

"The decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina must be respected by everyone, since its establishment is part of the peace agreement that was signed in Dayton in 1995 by the Serbs, the Bosniaks and the Croats," Inzko told a press conference in Sarajevo.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik warned on Tuesday that if a new law to reform the country's Constitutional Court is not adopted by the state-level parliament within 120 days, all Republika Srpska representatives will withdraw from all state institutions.

"If we move in that direction, we are definitively going into a blockade of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from that blockade, a break-up [of the country] is not far away," Dodik said.

Inzko meanwhile also called on Republika Srpska to withdraw its decision to hold a referendum questioning the powers of Bosnia's state judiciary and of the Office of the High Representative, which oversees the continuing civilian implementation of the Dayton peace deal.

"Everybody has the right to organise a referendum, but only within the limits of their own jurisdiction. A lower level of the administration of the state [the entity of Republika Srpska] cannot call a referendum on a higher level of the administration, since this will imply a change in the constitution which is only possible with the consensus of the three constitutive peoples [Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs]," he said.

During his speech, the High Representative defended the...