Bosnia Press Review - February 09

Here are the top stories in Bosnia and Herzegovina's main newspapers. Balkan Insight has not verified the reports and cannot vouch for their accuracy.

NEZAVISNE NOVINE

The US does not have anything against allowing Bosnia's Serb dominated region Republika Srpska to adopt a law on referendum as long as it does not jeopardize the country’s territorial integrity, Bosnian Prime Minister Nikola Spiric told the newspaper in an interview. “From what I concluded, the US administration only cares that the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not questioned... Everything that does not jeopardize [the country's] territorial integrity  will not result in increased activity by the American administration," Spiric said. "Republika Srpska has to adopt a law which will not irritate anyone, including the American administration," he added. Spiric spoke upon returning from the US where he had a number of meetings with representatives of the American administration and the World Bank. Spiric also said that the office of the international community's high representative to Bosnia did not oppose the adoption of a  referendum law in Republika Srpska. "They cannot find any legal reasons to object to it and as long as there are no legal objections, they cannot do anything to prevent it... The most they can do is feel political animosity about it, because they feel it weakens the state," Spiric said.

OSLOBODJENJE

The draft law on referendum prepared by the government of Republika Srpska is unlikely to win unanimous support from Serb MPs in the entity’s parliament on Tuesday. The president of the main Bosnian Serb opposition Serb Democratic Party, Ognjen Tadic, said the party would insist that the law include provisions which would make the organisation of a referendum on Bosnia’s possible NATO accession and on constitutional changes mandatory in Republika Srpska. “Since such provisions have not been included in the law, we believe that this is just another move by the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, to cheat the people,” Tadic said.

Milos Solaja from the Banja Luka-based Center for International Relations told the newspaper that the Serb Democratic Party would aim to test the SNSD’s resolve on the referendum. Solaja added that the SNSD had won the 2006 elections by promising to hold a referendum on Republika Srpska's secession from Bosnia. “The opposition is not prepared to let them use the same tactics again to win the October 2010 elections,” he said. “The SNSD’s hope that it would be able to talk about a referendum without doing anything about it has proven to be unfounded,” he added. Another opposition party, the Party of Democratic Progress, said that its deputies would vote for the law, but that they would challenge the government if and when it starts the procedure to decide on the referendum question. 

DNEVNI AVAZ

The mufti of the northeastern Bosnian town of Tuzla, Husein Kavazovic, questioned the reasons behind the recent police raid on a remote village in the area that is home to highly conservative Wahhabi Muslims. “By this operation, the police has shown its weakness in terms of improving conditions in which these people live and integrating them into the wider community,” Kavazovic told the newspaper. “If the state wants its authority to be respected it has to provide equal chances and equal rights to everyone and in Gornja Maoca that had not been the case,” he added.

Kavazovic said that he was surprised with what the seven arrested Gornja Maoca residents are suspected of. In the past, Kavazovic repeatedly clashed with the followers of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi movement, but he said that he was recently visiting the village and “did not notice any hostility or any readiness to attack the state. It is my responsibility to say that. I do not know if they violated the law in some other ways, but I do hope that they will get a fair trial if it comes to that,” Kavazovic said. Kavazovic called on MPs from the Bosnian parliament and members of the country’s presidency to visit Gornja Maoca and talk to its residents about how they live, but also about police conduct during last week’s raid.