Bosnische Serviërs zullen niet de weg van Kosovo volgen (en)
EUOBSERVER/BRUSSELS - Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serbian entity, the Republika Srpska (RS), will not be inspired to take the same route as Kosovo if it declares independence, an RS official has said.
"There are a lot of people in a lot of countries linking Kosovo to RS", Gordan Milosevic, political adviser to the prime minister of RS, told a group of journalists in Brussels on Wednesday (21 November).
Referring to Serbia prime minister Vojislav Kostunica's earlier statement that "preserving Kosovo and Republika Srpska are now the most important goals of our [Serbian] state and national policy", Mr Milosevic said that Bosnia's Serbian entity is "not interested".
"We are not his PR persons and we cannot suggest him what to say. It's up to him", he added, dismissing "speculations" circulating lately that RS was preparing a referendum on independence, in the event of declared Kosovo independence.
The semi-autonomous entity of Republika Srpska, mainly populated by Serbs (88%), together with the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, make up the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
Following Kosovo's intentions to proclaim unilateral independence, as well as an internal political crisis, many analysts and political commentators started suggesting that the Serbs of BiH may eventually be tempted to secede.
For his part, Mr Milosevic insisted that RS is satisfied with the current situation and only wants to keep it as it is.
"Everybody has analyses on their own", he said adding that "Serbs in RS have no potential do to something like that [declare independence]".
Republika Srpska also wants that BiH ultimately joins the EU and currently sees no other option.
"What is the alternative? We destroy Bosnia and then we create a world on our own?", Mr Milosevic said, explicitly stressing that this is not realistic.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has finalised the technical talks to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU - the first step towards EU membership.
However, the agreement has not yet been signed, as Brussels is concerned about the political situation in the country.
BiH entities have so far failed to introduce a common police reform, while Republika Srpska is strongly protesting against changes to the voting system in the country's council of ministers and parliament, imposed by the international community's High Representative Miroslav Lajcak.
Republika Srpska argues that these changes make it possible for an ethnic community - notably the Serbs - to be easily outvoted, something which it says is unacceptable and dangerous in a multi-ethnic society like that of Bosnia and Herzegovina.