Four Bosnian Serb officials were sanctioned by the United States Monday over their roles in encouraging the passage of a law that reportedly undermines the landmark Dayton Peace Agreement.
The law, signed by Bosnia's Serb leader Milorad Dodik earlier this month, effectively allows for the country's Serb entity – known as Republika Srpska (RS) – to bypass or ignore decisions made by the Balkan country's international envoy.
The U.S. embassy in Sarajevo slammed Dodik's passage of the law, calling the move "unconstitutional and a deliberate attack on the Dayton Peace Agreement."
The officials designated by the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday were speaker and president of the RS National Assembly, Nenad Stevandic, RS Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic, RS Justice Minister Milos Bukejlovic and Serb member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina presidency, Zeljka Cvijanovic.
Stevandic, Viskovic and Cvijanovic were credited for requesting a special session of the national assembly to vote on the "inflammatory legislation," the U.S. Treasury said, while Bukejlovic presented the law on behalf of the RS government.
"This action threatens the stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the hard-won peace underpinned by the Dayton Peace Agreement," said treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson.
In a separate statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller added that the law threatens the country's prospects for integration into Euro-Atlantic and European institutions.
But the Treasury Department said the institutions and government positions that the four officials represent are not the target of Monday's actions.
As a result of the action, their property and interests in property in the United States are blocked and must be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Meanwhile, sanctioned parliamentary speaker Stevandic tweeted that he considered the sanctions an "award for consistency, steadfastness and not giving in to blackmail and threats from those who are considered omnipotent."
A spokesman for Dodik's SNSD party, which holds most of the seats in the Republika Srpska assembly, labeled the U.S. move "shameful and hypocritical."
"No sanctions will prevent us from doing our job," spokesperson Radovan Kovacevic told local RTRS television.
Bosnia has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the Dayton Agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s but largely failed in providing a framework for the country's political development.
In accordance with the agreement, Bosnia has been divided into two bodies – a Muslim-Croat federation and Republika Srpska. The two entities are connected by a weak central government.
