On Sunday the CSU politician and former Federal Minister of Agriculture Christian Schmidt took up his post as High Representative of the international community in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
His work in Croatia, which is not only the only EU member state with a direct border with Bosnia, but also a signatory of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in the Balkan state in 1995, is followed with particular attention.
In a conversation with the FAZ, Croatia's Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić-Radman explains what his country expects from Schmidt - and for which ideas the German cannot expect any support from Zagreb.
Michael Martens
Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.
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“Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a place for experiments.
I am not only saying that as Croatia's foreign minister, but also as someone who was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina and whose family comes from there, ”explains Grlić-Radman at the beginning of the conversation.
The warning is aimed at an instrument of power that Schmidt has at least theoretically at his disposal in Sarajevo: the so-called Bonn powers.
These are powers that were given to the High Representative in Bosnia after the end of the war and with which he can depose elected politicians, but also decree or repeal laws.
Bosnia's Muslims want a unified state
After they had not been used for more than a decade, the outgoing High Representative Valentin Inzko reinstated them at the end of July. The Austrian decreed a law according to which the denial of genocide in Bosnia is punishable by imprisonment in the future. This targeted the Srebrenica genocide when more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were shot dead by Bosnian Serbs troops in 1995. Grlić-Radman is cautious about Inzko's approach: “Recognizing the genocide in Srebrenica is a question of values. The Office of the High Representative has the right to use the Bonn powers, but their application represents a democratic deficit that is incompatible with the European ambitions of Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The Bonn powers are a legal instrument,"But at the same time a political and legal atavism."
Grlić-Radman made a similar statement about the authority of the High Representative in Sarajevo, the OHR: "As a relic from the immediate post-war period, the OHR is today a manifestation of the democratic deficit in the country's political life." Croatia's foreign minister refused: "It would not be a solution to impose artificial constitutional models on the country by decree."
With this, Grlić-Radman alluded to the hopes of some politicians and publicists from the ranks of the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks). After that, Bosnia could be transformed into a unitary state through American and Western European pressure. There the Bosniaks, who make up just under the absolute majority in the population, would have the say. “Centralistic approaches can lead to instability in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Because who would actually be the bearer of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian statehood if only the law of the numerically strongest constituent people were allowed? ”Asked the minister.