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The Serb member of the Bosnian presidency, Mladen Ivanic. Photo: Anadolu.

Mladen Ivanic’s press adviser said on Friday that the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite state presidency will call for Moscow ambassador Mustafa Mujezinovic to step down when the presidency holds its next session later this month.

Ivanic will call for Mujezinovic’s resignation after a group of Bosnian students who were visiting Moscow earlier this week were photographed with the ambassador holding wartime Bosnian flags.

The white flag with a blue shield with six gold fleurs-de-lys was used from 1992 to 1998, when it was withdrawn on the order of the High Representative, the country’s international overseer.

Bosnian Serbs strongly oppose the use of the flag in public as they identify it with the Bosniak side in the war.

“The Serb member of the Bosnian presidency, Mladen Ivanic, believes that the move by ambassador Mujezinovic is inappropriate and that, at the very next session of the Bosnian presidency, on March 13, he will seek his dismissal,” Ivanic’s press adviser Marija Milic told Bosnian media.

The incident was also strongly condemned by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak.

The students, together with Mujezinovic, were photographed with the flag in Moscow’s Red Square while congratulating Bosnian citizens on the country’s Independence Day.

Political analyst Srdjan Puhalo suggested that Ivanic’s call for the ambassador’s resignation was connected to the fact that he is running for the state-level presidency role again in elections this autumn against Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik.

“I think Ivanic has preventatively asked for the replacement of the ambassador in order to avoid attacks by Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik and his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. They have accused him of the betrayal of [Serb] national interests on several occasions, so I do not believe they would miss this opportunity,” Puhalo told BIRN.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s official independence day on March 1 is not celebrated in the country’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, where many wanted to remain part of Yugoslavia.

Republika Srpska celebrates its own ‘statehood day’ on January 9 each year – a celebration which has also caused ethnic tensions in the country.

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