Bosnian Serb leader: I went to Zagreb to represent Serbs, not Bosnia

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I never went to Zagreb as Bosnia's Presidency member but as Serb representative and I didn't need to explain that in Zagreb, Serb Presidency member Milorad Dodik and Bosnian Serb leader told the Radio Television of Bosnia's Republika Srpska region (RTRS) adding that not a single harmful work against Bosniak's was uttered during the meeting.

During the Wednesday meeting, Dodik met with Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. Thanking his guests for the support they provide for Bosnia's EU accession process, he said they talked about cooperation and he familiarised them with the situation in Bosnia from the Serb perspective.

The Bosnian Serb leader, known for his secessionist rhetoric, stayed Zagreb in what seemed to be an official visit to the Croatian capital, even though it never invited Bosnia's tripartite Presidency to exchange visit since the election in 2018. unofficially, the reason for this attitude Zagreb sees in the fact that the Croat leader and head of the sister party of Croatia's strongest ethnic-oriented Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in Bosnia lost to his rival from the Democratic Front (DF) Zeljko Komsic, also a Croat, who is believed to have won thanks to Bosniak votes.

The local HDZ BiH with the support from Croatia has claimed since that Komsic is not a legitimate representative of the Croat people in the country's tripartite Presidency which, according to the Constitution, consists of three members, each from the three constituent peoples in the country, a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb member, not mentioning the legitimacy in representation.

He also told the RTRS that they also talked about the migrant situation and condemned the official Sarajevo over negative remarks regarding his stay in Zagreb.

“I didn't come here on the Presidency's behalf on in the basis of its decision. I didn't need to explain that to them, I have enough capacity to represent the interests of the Serb people. It's a pathological situation of the political Sarajevo. In my opinion, not a single word harmful to the Bosniak people or Bosnia was uttered here,” Dodik stressed.

The Serb Presidency member's visit to Zagreb was condemned by the strongest Bosniak party in the country, Bosniak and Croat Presidency members as well as some Croatian officials as harmful to the relations between the two countries and peoples from the region.