Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at a UNSC Briefing on Bosnia and Herzegovina
Mr. President,
We note the participation in today’s meeting of Denis Bečirović, Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) – quite rightly – remains under close scrutiny by the UN Security Council, primarily in the context of the implementation of the General Framework Agreement for Peace, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 1031. Serious interethnic frictions continue to mount in the country.
At the heart of these dangerous phenomena lies the reckless and risky policy pursued by Western countries to undermine the decentralized architecture of the country established by the Dayton Agreement, which stipulates the equality of the three constituent peoples and two entities with wide-ranging constitutional powers.
Particularly striking was the overtly destructive interference in Bosnian affairs by Berlin, London, and Brussels bureaucrats, as they have been leveraging blackmail and outright threats to impose agendas that run counter to the national interests of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a blatant desire to, at any cost, keep the grip of their external governance on the sovereign State of BiH. For the advancement of their parochial goals, the West has no qualms about sacrificing years of international stabilization efforts in post-conflict settlement.
There are persistent attempts to replace the Security Council-endorsed Dayton framework with the Euro-Atlantic pseudo-values, and thereby – under the guise of creating a civic unitary state in BiH – to strip the BiH peoples of their national identity, their collective rights, and their levers to counter Western neo-colonialist expansionism.
Essentially, the tenuous balance of interests among the BiH parties is being disrupted precisely by those who were supposed to be guarantors of the Dayton Agreement, and who undertook to facilitate its implementation. Thus, we see the egregious violations of the principle of consensus-driven decision-making at the national level, which is to be built on compromise between Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats.
All of this is generating resoundingly negative implications, and not only for the domestic political landscape in the country, but also for the climate of good neighborly relations in the Western Balkans region as a whole. For those with particularly short memories, I wish to recall what happened back in the early 1990s. The West egged on certain political actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina to take unilateral actions and demonstratively disregard the views of Serbs who were defending the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, and this is precisely what triggered the outbreak of civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Regrettably, the Serbs are being treated this way even today. A glaring example of this is the case of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić, who has been languishing in the UN pre-trial detention unit in The Hague, while being at death’s door. We completely fail to understand why the Serb general cannot be granted early release for humanitarian reasons or, at the very least, why he cannot be transferred to Serbia to get medical treatment and to serve the remainder of his sentence there. We call upon the Mechanism to finally take that decision. This would alleviate the immense suffering that he is enduring because of the violation of his fundamental rights enshrined in human rights treaties, the Nelson Mandela Rules, specific UN Security Council resolutions, and the Mechanism’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Should Mr. Mladić’s health deteriorate, all the responsibility for this will lie squarely with the Mechanism, which has long since become atavistic and must be shuttered at the earliest.
Another egregious case is the plight of Radovan Karadžić. With the connivance of the Mechanism, the British authorities have created inhumane detention conditions for him. Civil society organizations have even qualified this as “physical and psychological terror” on the part of London.
We urge the membership of the Council to keep these two cases in mind, especially when you hear our Western colleagues proudly speechifying about humanism and the overriding need to respect human rights.
Mr. President,
To date, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) remains the main source of instability in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was supposed to serve as an international mediator tasked – under Annex 10 of the Dayton Agreement – with facilitating the implementation of the civilian aspects of the Peace Agreement, but now it has transformed into a cudgel of the West, with virtually unfettered leeway to interfere in the domestic affairs of BiH. In order to justify the need to preserve their external protectorate over the country, the OHR is wielding legal violence against a sovereign State, knowingly stoking political unrest within the country.
The apex here was the illegal “appointment” to the post of High Representative of retired German politician Christian Schmidt, which was done in breach of procedures and international practice, and in circumvention of UN Security Council resolutions. This resulted in the definitive delegitimization of the OHR, and clearly demonstrated the desire of Western countries to “privatize” the Bosnian settlement process by “squeezing out” those who disagree with their approaches, and to establish alternative non-UNSC platforms to monitor the situation in BiH in the spirit of the notorious “rules-based order.”
With the backing of, inter alia, those who we have heard speaking in this chamber today, Mr. Schmidt persistently attempts to hypocritically shift the blame for the consequences of his destabilizing actions onto the Republika Srpska. Thus, he is accusing the Serbs and their leadership of all deadly sins, even though they only seek to pursue a policy that would be patriotic and independent of external dictates, and within the framework of the broad autonomy of the Bosnian Serb entity guaranteed by the Dayton Accords.
Mr. President,
We demand that Western countries cease their intervention in the domestic affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We insist on the immediate closure of the OHR. This is the very first necessary step towards stabilization in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is past time for the peoples of BiH to gain genuine sovereignty and independence and to determine their own future. Solutions to problems and frictions need to be crafted through a broad, mutually respectful dialogue among the Bosnian stakeholders themselves, on the basis of the Dayton Peace Agreement. It is precisely in this vein that we view the recent statement of Mr. Schmidt that he will no longer honor us with his presence. However, the problems that he has created, alas, will have to be remedied.
In this context, we note the consistent policy of the Bosnian Serbs in defense of the Dayton architecture with its decentralized structure. Banja Luka has repeatedly proposed reasonable initiatives for the establishment of intra-Bosnian dialogue, which have been torpedoed at the instigation of Western countries. All of this is clearly reflected in the report of the Government of the Republika Srpska on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We urge the members of the Security Council to closely study this document.
We are convinced that the Dayton Agreement remains the only viable foundation for a post-conflict settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Lasting inter-ethnic reconciliation can only be achieved on the basis of the Dayton international legal framework. A well-calibrated system of checks and balances, designed to take into account the interests of all three Bosnian peoples, remains the only robust foundation for their peaceful coexistence and non-discriminatory, equal status within a single State. Any attempts to distort the Dayton principles will have catastrophic consequences for BiH and the entire Western Balkans region.
For our part, Russia, as one of the guarantors of the Dayton Accords, stands ready to engage constructively to ensure a genuine post-conflict settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Thank you.
