Bosnian state prosecutors ordered the arrest of separatist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and his aides Wednesday for defying a court summons, escalating a political standoff that threatens the country's stability.
The decision was taken two weeks after a separate case in which Dodik was sentenced to a year in jail for defying the rulings of an international peace envoy, a spokesperson from the state security agency, SIPA, said.
Prosecutors have sought the help of Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) in the arrest, which comes after Dodik and aides ignored a court summons. It was not clear if the plan was to detain Dodik or to accompany him to answer the summons.
The state prosecutors' office was investigating Dodik, the president of a Serb-run entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina called Republika Srpska (RS), for what it described as an attack on constitutional order after he initiated the adoption of laws barring state judiciary and police from the region after his sentencing.
"We have received a request from the court police of Bosnia and Herzegovina to assist them," SIPA spokesperson Jelena Miovcic said.
RS television, citing the regional government, reported that the state prosecution has also ordered the arrest of RS Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and regional parliament president Nenad Stevandic over ignoring summons in the case of the attack on constitutional order.
The RS is one of two entities created to end a 1992-5 war that killed more than 1000,000 people in multi-ethnic Bosnia. They are linked by a weak central government in a state supervised by an international authority to stop it from slipping back into conflict.
Earlier Tuesday, EU military reinforcements started arriving in Bosnia as concerns grew over escalating defiance by the RS.
The European Union Force (EUFOR) said in a statement that troops under its command were starting to arrive at Sarajevo airport and by land.
"Military personnel, vehicles and helicopters from the Czech Republic, Italy and Romania will reinforce EUFOR troops over the coming days," it said.
Moves by the RS – the ethnic Serb half of Bosnia – to pass laws forbidding access to its police and judiciary sent alarm bells ringing in Europe and America.
Open defiance by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik of Christian Schmidt, the high representative charged with overseeing the peace accords that ended Bosnia's 1990s war, has aggravated the situation.
NATO chief Mark Rutte on Monday flew to Sarajevo and said the alliance will not allow a "security vacuum to emerge."
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio separately told reporters: "We're hoping we can do anything we can to avoid another conflict in Europe from emerging."
Rubio has accused Dodik of jeopardizing Bosnia's stability.
Since the end of Bosnia's inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, the Balkan country has consisted of two autonomous halves – the Serb-dominated RS and a Muslim-Croat region.
The two entities have their own governments and parliaments and are linked by weak central institutions, which include a three-member presidency made up of ethnic Serb, Croat and Bosniak Muslim representatives.
EUFOR did not say how many troop reinforcements it was sending to Bosnia. Images it published showed a transport aeroplane at Sarajevo airport dropping off a contingent of Romanian soldiers.
EUFOR's Facebook page also said that several Italian military helicopters arrived at its base in the Sarajevo suburb of Butmir.
Last Friday, EUFOR announced a "temporary increase" in the number of troops in Bosnia as a "proactive measure".
It has not given the total number of soldiers currently deployed in the country. An Austrian parliamentary delegation that visited Bosnia in February said there were 1,500 EUFOR personnel in the country.
