Serb Chief Denounces Bosnian National Day

Bosnian Serbs will again be absent at the country's National Day reception at the State Presidency on November 25, which only Bosniak [Muslim] and Bosnian Croat leaders usualy attend.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik wrote to foreign ambassadors, saying that he sees such receptions as forced and as an attempt to coerce Serbs, adding that the diplomats ought not to consider it a truly national event.
 
“It is only an attempt at manipulation and it is an abuse that this date is announced as a holiday in the country to which you are accredited," Dodik's letter said.

Bosnia's State Parliament declared November 25 the National Day on February 28, 1995, while the 1992-5 war was still ongoing.

Parliament has since then failed to agree on a law on state holidays owing to different perceptions in the country's two entities, the mainly Bosniak and Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the mainly Serb Republika Srpska.

Politicians from Sarajevo criticised the letter as an attempt by Dodik to undermine both the sovereignty and continuity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The date marks the day in 1943 when Bosnia was proclaimed a constituent Yugoslav republic at a meeting in Mrkonjic Grad.

Some Serbs are not against the celebration, however. Sasa Magazinovic, an ethnic Serb member of the Social Democrat Party in the State Parliament said he has nothing against it.

"It is clear to everybody that Bosnia and Herzegovina existed long before the [1995] Dayton Peace Agreement and November 25 is a legitimate national holiday to celebrate," he said.