Friday 16 March 2007 at 20:30 on EBS

Doris Pack on BiH

Transcript of the interview Doris Pack, Member of the European Parliament, South East Europe Committee

Doris Pack presented her annual report on BiH in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 12/3/07

First of all this is a report which we are doing once a year because we are closely following our neighbourhood which means all countries which want to accede to the EU. Therefore as a rapporteur for Bosnia and as a chairwoman of the delegation for Southeastern Europe I have done this report. I started in December but in between a lot of things changed and some are moving as so the actual report is not as strong as it was in December because in between they seem to have moved towards the police reform. After my meeting with PM of BiH, Mr Spiric, three weeks ago, I’ve just learnt that himself is very much interested in bringing the constitution reform question forward, so I changed my report in the last three months a little bit because I think we should not blame somebody or a country if things are moving forward. We want to give a welcome hand and accept and even welcome if there are positive steps that is why I changed some amendments and paragraphs.

There was a big problem because everywhere in Europe and our newspapers there were, we learned that PM of Republika Srpska (RS) had told that he would make a referendum if Kosovo solution is running independence and everybody learned it like this and then I was told by Mr Dodik and Mr Spiric that it was not the case and the only thing they had in mind when they were talking about the referendum was the question of RS because in this time a lot of people also talked on destroying RS so ok if the PM is telling me that this is the truth I have to accept and therefore rearranged my wording because I didn’t want to make (inaudible) in fire if it’s not necessary.

I got a letter from Mr Dodik, PM of RS asking me for a meeting with him asap, I couldn’t afford before the report but I will go in the first week of April to see the PM and other authorities in Banja Luka. I think it is needed with each other and not on each other and therefore I’m thankful that he made this step and in between I had a lot of talks with his advisor so everything is on its way. I think everybody has to keep in mind that BiH is in our interest and not any personal problems.

I’m concerned because BiH is a product of Dayton and Dayton is something which has ended the war but which created a situation that is difficult to run as a country. Ok if there would only be two entities which are working and which are not hindering the state to run the governement, the Bosnian government to run the state it would be ok, but if you see there’s one entity which is more or less strengthened in itself and the other entity which is composed by ten cantons, i think it’s very difficult to get them on the same track and I think we should really help them to overcome this situation and I hope very much that the constitutional changes which are in the mind of everybody should be taken asap.

The High Representative has also organized papers which can give platform for this discussion and I learned by PM Spiric h wants to get the Parliament as a platform enriched by people who are knowledgeable for example the Venice Commission and others because I think it shoudl be done and not in a hurry as it has been tried to be done last year, it should be done in a very composed way, it means with an agenda second step, third step everybody can be sure that its step is important as a first step.

I think there will be a compromise possible between the three communities.

First of all it’s not up to me to change Dayton, it’s up to the people in the country if they want to change Dayton as a constiution but it cannot be done against any community, any nation so therefore I have an understanding for the suffering people in Srebrenica but I think it’s not a solution, the solution is that at least they can reconcile with each other but to reconcile with each other one thing is really needed an dit is that Karadzic has to go to the Hague. Because he is the one who stays for everything that happened in the nineties and as long as he is not in the Hague i think people have problems to reconcile but if i look to Bosnia i don’t look only to the people in my age or little bit younger i look to the young people and the young people need a future in BiH therefore the elder people who suffered a lot should find a possibility to reconcile and not to try to make new enclavec, new districts or whatever, i think Bih as such shoudl stay as it is with three communities, and each community can live therefore we need bigger refugee return especially in RS.

 

Warning: Unknown: open(/var/php_sessions/sess_c3f107932e27702aff7edd06247cea94, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/var/php_sessions) in Unknown on line 0