BRUSSELS: The European Union Thursday urged all sides in Bosnia to respect court rulings and avoid \u201cdivisive\u201d actions after the head of the country\u2019s Serb region was sentenced to jail for defying an international envoy.
\n\u201cThe EU expects all political actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina to respect the decisions of the courts and acknowledge their independence and impartiality without applying any pressure or interference,\u201d a European Commission spokesman said.
\nBrussels urges all actors to \u201crefrain from and renounce provocative, divisive rhetoric and actions, including questioning the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of the country,\u201d spokesman Anouar El Anouni told reporters.
\nUnder a 1995 peace agreement, Bosnia is split into two autonomous bodies \u2014 a Bosniak-Croat federation and a Serb entity, connected by a weak central government under supervision by an international high representative.
\nMilorad Dodik, the pro-Russian leader of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS), was sentenced to a year in jail Wednesday for failing to comply with decisions made by the high representative, Christian Schmidt.
\nRussia has slammed the verdict as \u201cpolitical,\u201d and Bosnian Serb lawmakers were weighing potential measures in response.
\nThe EU has previously warned that challenging the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia\u2019s intercommunal war would threaten the country\u2019s ambitions to join the bloc.
\n\u201cThe European Union is unequivocally committed to Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2019s EU perspective as a single, united and sovereign country,\u201d El Anouni said.
\n\u201cWe encourage all political actors to focus on the EU path, and this for the benefit of citizens, a large majority of whom do support EU integration,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS: The European Union Thursday urged all sides in Bosnia to respect court rulings and avoid \u201cdivisive\u201d actions after the head of the country\u2019s Serb region was sentenced to jail for defying an international envoy. \u201cThe EU expects all political actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina to respect the decisions of the courts and acknowledge their …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77749,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77730\/revisions\/77749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}