DODIK: BELGRADE-BANJA LUKA MOTORWAY SHOULD BE FINISHED IN UP TO FOUR YEARS

BEOGRAD, JULY 8 /SRNA/ – SNSD leader Milorad Dodik said the motorway linking Belgrade and Banja Luka should be fully completed within the next four years.

"It will take three to four years, four at the most, thanks, of course, to Serbia. Serbia has accommodated us, with President Aleksandar Vučić deciding to build the motorway from Kuzmin to Rača and the bridge over the Sava River at Serbia's expense. That has now been completed," Dodik told Radio Belgrade. He added that Republika Srpska had begun construction of the Rača–Bijeljina section, with Serbia also participating in the project, while Republika Srpska is financing the Rača-Brčko and Brčko-Modriča sections. According to Dodik, the remaining issue is agreement on the Corridor 5c route, where, he said, the European Union is attaching political conditions to funding for Republika Srpska. "The section from Doboj to Modriča has yet to be agreed," Dodik mentioned. Dodik added that he would prefer there to be no border crossing between Serbia and Republika Srpska, or BiH. "If it becomes integrated, then we will dismantle it so that it is no longer integrated. Why should we have a border crossing with Serbia? I am not an illusionist. The only natural solution is that, if Germany could reunify in the 1990s under the principle of 'one people - one state,' then we can say the same. It is unnatural for us to live in BiH," he added. Dodik argued that BiH, or what he described as the political leadership in Muslim Sarajevo, has obstructed projects important to Republika Srpska. He cited the planned Buk Bijela hydropower plant near Foča, which he said Republika Srpska could already have built jointly with Serbia but which was blocked by the Constitutional Court of BiH through a decision supported by three international judges and two Bosniak judges. "In addition, we have been waiting for 15 years to obtain approval for a gas pipeline to cross beneath the Drina River for about 80 metres so that we can build a pipeline toward Banja Luka. We cannot do it. Nor can we build Trebinje Airport because Sarajevo continually slows us down," Dodik said. He questioned why, in his view, it should not be acceptable to say that the Serb people deserve one state in the Balkans, adding that Serbs have no historical, present-day or future reason to live together with Bosniaks in BiH. "Why do we constantly shy away from that idea? Why do we run from it? That is why I am not considered acceptable. That is why I keep being sanctioned. Why? Because this is impossible. Keeping us in Bosnia is impossible," Dodik said. Commenting on the veto by the Serb member of the BiH Presidency, Željka Cvijanović, of the Presidency's decision on appointing members of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, Dodik said it had been an important political battle. He noted that the issue is governed by Annex 8 of the Dayton Peace Accords, reminding that in 2016 Mladen Ivanić had agreed that the commission should consist only of members from BiH, without foreign members, for a one-year trial period. According to Dodik, that arrangement was not extended, and now Denis Bećirović wants to restore the participation of foreign members who would decide that cultural monuments created by the Serb people throughout history should be classified as the cultural heritage of BiH. "That is Serbian cultural heritage. We do not want Muslim heritage to be regarded as ours. If there is something in Republika Srpska that belongs to Muslim cultural heritage, we accept that it is theirs. However, they want Serbian monasteries and everything else created by the Serb people to be declared the heritage of BiH," Dodik said. He said Željka Cvijanović had exercised her veto because international representatives had already proposed candidates for the commission, which, according to him, would once again decide whether Serbian Orthodox monasteries are the cultural and historical heritage of the Serb people or of BiH. "If you accept that, then it is no longer a Serbian monastery. It is just another step toward introducing the so-called 'Bosnian Orthodox Church.' That is why we fight every day and say this cannot be allowed. We cannot live with them. Let them have Sarajevo and whatever they want - just leave us alone," Dodik said. He reiterated that Republika Srpska has never recognized Christian Schmidt as High Representative, describing him as illegitimate and unlawful, and said Republika Srpska considers all of Schmidt's decisions, as well as those of previous High Representatives, to be null and void. Dodik further claimed that Schmidt had come to BiH to continue Adolf Hitler's policies by other means, deprive Serbs of their property rights and undermine the Dayton Peace Accords, adding that Western countries had behaved in BiH "like elephants in a glass garden." "Of course they have caused us harm. That is understandable, but they must understand that Serbs have never yielded to force and have always resisted it," Dodik said, adding that he had never agreed to meet with Schmidt. Dodik also stated that Bosniaks had previously enjoyed the support of the administration of the former US President Joe Biden, but that the election of Donald Trump had made the situation easier for Republika Srpska because it now had greater opportunities to communicate with the United States.