State Department: Sanctions against Dodik Cancelled Owing to RS Assembly’s Constructive Measures

State Department (Photo: YTPrintScreen)

A U.S. State Department spokesperson has said that sanctions against Alliance of Independent Social Democrats leader and former Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik and his associates had been lifted owing to the RS Assembly’s constructive measures over the past weeks.

“The constructive actions that the RS Assembly has undertaken over the past weeks should improve Bosnia and Herzegovina’s stability and enable a partnership with the U.S., based on shared interests, economic potential and joint prosperity,” an unnamed spokesperson for the State Department told the Sarajevo detector.ba website in a written reply.

The spokesperson added that “cancelling sanctions against the former RS president and 48 of his associates, who were under sanctions over the past three years, is part of the U.S.’s regular revisions with regard to sanctions.” It said that these 48 individuals and companies were on a special blacklist for the Western Balkans.

In mid-October the RS Assembly annulled all of the bills that it had adopted earlier, which were ruled unconstitutional by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Constitutional Court. One of these bills was a bill on real estate, as well as decisions on the non-implementation of decisions by the Bosnian Constitutional Court and high representative in RS, as well as a ban on some police and judicial institutions in this Bosnian entity.