Bosnian Serb lawmakers suggested on Monday they would block Bosnia's central parliament unless the Muslim Bosniak leader ended attempts to have a U. N. court revise a ruling exonerating Serbia from genocide accusations.
Bosnian Serb lawmakers suggested on Monday they would block Bosnia's central parliament unless the Muslim Bosniak leader ended attempts to have a U.N. court revise a ruling exonerating Serbia from genocide accusations.
The decision by Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak member of the country's presidency, to back an appeal against the judgement by the International Court of Justice despite opposition by Serbian and Croatian peers, has angered Bosnian Serbs.
If Izetbegovic goes ahead, Bosnia will face a prolonged political crisis which may even bring about "physical confrontations", Mladen Bosic, the parliament's lower house deputy speaker, said at a news conference called by Serb officials in Bosnia's state institutions.
The ICJ's 2007 judgment exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for killings, rapes and "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, though it said Serbia had failed to prevent genocide.
Izetbegovic, who heads the largest Bosniak party, SDA, said the request for revision would be filed this week.
Serb politicians accuse him of exceeding his jurisdiction and violating the constitution and the 1995 Dayton agreement that ended the war among the country's Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats.
"If the request for revision has been filed, there will be no parlimentary majority," said Vukota Govedarica, the head of the Bosnian largest opposition SDS party, suggesting that an alliance of Serb parties in the central cabinet and state parliament would boycott the work of state institutions.
The Dayton peace treaty left Bosnia divided between a Serb Republic and a Bosniak-Croat Federation linked by a weak central government. The presidency's Serb chairman, Mladen Ivanic, said he would call on Wednesday an emergency presidency session to try resolve a dispute through talks with his two colleagues.
Bosnia has been through a series of crises in the past year, including an illegal Serb referendum, which has slowed its progress towards the European Union which it aspires to join.
The case brought against Serbia at the ICJ was the first time a state had been tried for genocide.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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