Montenegro is a friendly and brotherly country but it would be inappropriate for its President Milo Djukanovic to visit Bosnia at this moment, said Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency who refused to give consent for inviting the Montenegrin President for an official visit.
Milo Djukanovic had a chance to visit Bosnia earlier but he did not do that, he added.
“Montenegro was and is a friendly, even a brotherly country and there is no reason it doesn’t stay like that in the future,” said Dodik.
“It was inappropriate to me to do I now when Montenegro is facing a serious challenge we are all witnessing, and which is closely followed in the Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb-dominated region), due to the fact that we belong to the same Church,” he explained.
Bosnia’s State Presidency agreed on Monday to extend an invitation to French President Emmanuel Macron for a visit, but the three reached no consent on inviting the President of Montenegro to Bosnia.
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Speaking to reporters after the session, Dodik said they avoided “problematic” topics, explaining that he refused to give consent for Djukanovic's visit because of the current situation in Montenegro – the neighbouring country that is facing tensions over the recently adopted Law on Religious Freedoms which the Serbian Orthodox Church opposes.
Commenting on this, the President of Montenegro said this was only speaking of the problems affecting Bosnia and Herzegovina. He said the lack of invitation did not provoke a spiteful reaction in him.
