Bosnian Presidency Chairman rejects plan to send army to eastern border

The session was scheduled on request of Bosnia Presidency member, Zeljko Komsic, who among other things proposed the deployment of Bosnian Armed Forces to the eastern borders to prevent further influx of illegal migrants, but Dodik disagreed.

“That’s not within the army’s competency. I cannot accept the deployment of the army on borders with Serbia and Montenegro,” Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader who maintains strong partnership relations of Serbia and Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity that he represents, told reporters.

He also rejected a proposal to deploy the European border and coast guard agency, Frontex, as, according to Dodik, it would only make the border with Croatia “harder.”

Dodik described it as “a masochist decision that would only increase the crisis problem.”

Addressing the media, Bosniak Presidency member, Sefik Dzaferovic, said he asked that the whole country shares the burden of migrant crisis equally but that his proposal was dismissed.

“My stances regarding the migrant crisis include that Bosnia and Herzegovina must protect its border from illegal migrants’ entrance through state agencies. The burden must be shared by the entire country. It is not fair that the burden is taken by two or three cantons with special accent on the Una-Sana Canton,” Dzaferovic said, adding that Dodik objected the idea.

Dzaferovic also deems that the migrants must be treated humanely and that they must respect laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Dodik confirmed he was against accommodating the migrants on the territory of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity.

“Migrant centres won’t be built on the territory of Republika Srpska because Republika Srpska shouldn’t be collateral damage in all that,” he said.

According to the Service for Foreigners' Affairs, over 9,000 migrants entered the country since the beginning of the year. As a part of a regular procedure, 8,466 of them expressed the intention to seek asylum, but only 196 did so.

Migrants were recently reported to have taken part in several significant incidents in the northwest Bosnia, which made the authorities of the Una-Sana Canton to ask for the relocation of migrant centres from urban zones for security reasons.