The President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik. Photo: Anadolu.

The referendum planned in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska is to be discussed at a session of the Peace Implementation Council, PIC – an ad-hoc group representing countries and international organisations overseeing Bosnia’s peace agreement and the work of the Office of the High Representative, OHR, which is responsible for its continued implementation.

The meeting was initially scheduled to take place in Sarajevo on Tuesday, but the OHR postponed it until further notice to allow more time for consultations, international officials told BIRN.

Despite repeated warnings from Western and Bosniak officials, the Republika Srpska authorities are determined to hold the referendum on September 25.

They are seeking public backing for the annual Day of Republika Srpska to continue to be celebrated on January 9, despite the fact that it was ruled discriminatory and thus unconstitutional by Bosnia’s Constitutional Court.

The decision to go ahead with the vote has split the international community, which at this stage has no consensus on possible sanctions, a Western diplomat told BIRN on Monday.

There is a rift between the West – which has already condemned the referendum as illegal – and Russia, which has in the past supported Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity’s right to self-determination, the diplomat said.

But even some EU and NATO member countries, while condemning the referendum, are strongly against any use of the OHR’s executive powers in an attempt to prevent it, he added.

Some of these countries believe that Bosnia has grown to the point that it should not be micro-managed by the international community.

An additional reason for their objections to the use of OHR’s powers is their concern that the OHR has no means to guarantee the implementation of any of its decisions.

This could encourage Bosnian Serb or any other local leaders to flatly ignore its decisions or escalate the crisis further, they fear.

“This situation puts the OHR in a no-win situation,” another diplomat told BIRN.

“If the OHR fails to react to the referendum, then this effectively means the end of the OHR. Yet if it imposes sanctions on RS, and cannot see them through, that also means the end of the OHR,” the diplomat said.

The international community, as well many Bosniak leaders, hoped that US Vice-President Joe Biden, during his visit to Belgrade last Tuesday, would raise the issue and convince Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic to persuade RS President Milorad Dodik to call off the referendum.

Yet these hopes have so far remained unfulfilled.

After the meeting between Biden and Vucic, neither of them mentioned the referendum, and since then, RS officials reiterated their determination to hold the vote, adding that Serbian officials will not meddle in their internal affairs.

Bosniak officials meanwhile have warned that the referendum could be a prelude for another popular vote on the independence of Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosniak officials have said that in that case, they would be willing to defend the territorial integrity of their country.

“This [referendum] is some kind of test balloon,” Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak member of the tripartite state presidency and the leader of the main Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action, told Anadolu Agency on Saturday.

Izetbegovic warned that unless the crisis is resolved soon, it could “slowly plunge [the country] into conflicts which later you will be unable to halt.”