Bosnian Serbs Call For Independence Referendum

http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=795432006


Reuters
May 29, 2006


Calls for Bosnia Serb referendum
By Olga Lola Ninkovic


BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - Long-standing calls by Serb nationalists [sic] for the
Serb Republic to secede from Bosnia grew louder on Monday, following
Montenegro's vote in a referendum earlier this month to split from Serbia.

The Serb National Movement, made up mostly of Serbs forced out of Croatia in
1995, said it had collected nearly 50,000 signatures of Serbs across the
country for a petition to demand an independence referendum.

"The will of the citizens cannot be ignored. The Serb people do not want to
live in a Bosnia imposed on them. The Serb people want a free Republika
Srpska, separated from an imposed Bosnia and Herzegovina,"
said movement president Dane Cankovic.

An apparent endorsement of the referendum demand by Bosnian Serb Prime
Minister Milorad Dodik was sharply rebuked on Monday by the country's
international peace overseer, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, part of whose job
is to keep Bosnia together.

"The international community will not allow the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be endangered," his office said in a
statement on Monday.
....
The U.S.-sponsored Dayton accord ended Bosnia's war of secession from
Serb-dominated Yugoslavia in 1995, making Bosnia a single state comprising
two "entities"
- the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat federation.

Although its 18-month initiative for secession has been ignored officially,
the Serb National Movement gained popularity after Montenegro voted for
independence, dissolving its loose union with Serbia.
....
Montenegro was one of Yugoslavia's federal republics with a legal right to
secession which it retained in the looser Serbia-Montenegrin union.

Under Bosnia's peace accord Republika Srpska had no such right. Kosovo is
still nominally a province of Serbia but is under U.N. control.

Dodik proposed Bosnia be organized as a federal unit, giving each ethnic
group the right to self-determination through referendum....

Serb radicals urged Dodik on Monday to put the referendum issue on the
parliamentary agenda to prove he was serious, not simply fishing for votes
ahead of the October general election.