“Local politicians should simply stop criticising in the first place the international community and start from themselves to see where is their responsibility,” local media on Monday quoted Office of the High Representative, OHR, spokesman Oleg Milisic as saying.
This demand came after the OHR increasingly came under fire from all sides of Bosnia’s divided political spectrum.
In the latest incident, Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) member of Bosnia’s state presidency, Haris Silajdzic, sent an open letter to the United Nations Security Council, criticising Lajcak for his December 12 report to the Council. In the report Lajcak blamed Silajdzic and other local leaders for the continued political deadlock in the country.
Since the 2006 general elections, verbal clashes among local leaders, especially Silajdzic and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, has increased ethnic tensions and blocked all key political and economic reforms.
In his open letter to the UN Security Council on Sunday, Silajdzic rebuffed this criticism and charged that Bosnia’s political crisis has not been caused by political infighting, but because the international community has failed to secure the full implementation of the Dayton peace accord – the deal which ended Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.
Parallel to Silajdzic’s criticism, the international community has been increasingly criticised by the government of the Serb-dominated Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska, and its premier Dodik. Dodik has been complaining that the OHR is too deeply involved in Bosnian politics and should let local leaders develop their own relations and find compromise on their own.
Dodik and his government recently went a step further when they pressed criminal charges against a group of local and international officials, including Lajcak’s principle deputy, US diplomat Raffi Gregorian, for “conspiring” against Republika Srpska.
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