Bosnian Serb Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik. Photo: EPA/VLADIMIR STOJKOVIC

If Kosovo becomes a member of the United Nations and other international institutions, Bosnia’s mainly Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, RS, will demand the same, Milorad Dodika, the RS President, told Friday’s Vecernje Novosti, a Serbian daily.

Dodik told the newspaper that back in 2008, after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, the RS Assembly adopted a resolution stating that, “the RS will seek statehood status in case new international principles and practices of recognition of the right of self-determination are implemented in the international community”.

He added that this resolution “is still valid and we will not give up on it”.

The resolution, adopted in February 2008, drew condemnation from Western diplomats.

Deputies at the same session also resolved to hold a referendum on the future status of the RS in case “a large number of United Nations members, especially European Union countries” recognize Kosovo’s independence.

“In that case, the RS National Assembly considers it has the right to gauge public opinion on statehood through a direct declaration of citizens in a referendum,” the resolution stated.

Although Dodik has frequently threatened to hold an independence vote in the past, no such referendum has been held, largely because neither the EU, nor Serbia, nor Russia, has suggested it would back the idea.

“The solution of relations between Belgrade and Pristina on a permanent basis should also include solving the issue of the status of the Republika Srpska”, Dodik added.

He said a territorial division of Kosovo should also be discussed as a possible option.

“If we come to a position to talk about it, I am ready to gather all the state and national factors of the Serbs, including us from the Republika Srpska, and to seriously put that topic on the agenda,” he said.

“All points of view should be put forward for and against, without emotions and calculations. After all, there are not even permanent borders here,” Dodik said.

Regarding Britain’s decision, as holder of the presidency of the UN Security Council in August, not to put Kosovo on the council’s agenda, Dodik said he was not surprised, citing Britain’s “anti-Serbian” policy.

“We must fight for our positions openly, and openly say the British have been permanently directed against us,” Dodik said.

So far, the Security Council has reviewed reports on the work of the UN mission in Kosovo every three months. The last such session was on May 14.

Britain and other Western countries favour changing the format and dynamics of UN sessions on Kosovo, as well as reducing the budget of UNMIK, arguing that the situation in Kosovo does not represent a current threat to international peace and security.

Serbia strongly opposes moves to downgrade the Kosovo issue at the UN.

“We are not fighting against the Albanians, but against many Western countries who are behind Kosovo’s independence, including the United Kingdom,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday in an interview for Pink TV.

Dodik, who often describes Bosnia and Herzegovina as a failed or failing state, does not hide that his ultimate goal is the independence of the autonomous Bosnian entity.

He often insists that the RS is already a state, while Bosnia and Herzegovina is at best merely a community of states.

“Republika Srpska has all the features of the state and it will be a state,” he said on RS Police Day in April.

“Our freedom is to be defended by the RS police, rather than the armed forces of Bosnia that are working against the RS,” Dodik added.

Republika Srpska and Serbia should end up as one state, Dodik repeated at the end of May at a lecture given at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade.

However, he added that he did not expect Serbian unification to come now, but by the end of the century, or in the next few decades.

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