Republika Srpska

A UN court has sentenced Radovan Karadzic to 40 years in jail after finding the former Bosnian Serb leader guilty of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and on nine other war crime charges.

Members of the three statistical agencies of Bosnia, the state agency and those of the two entities, have been unable to agree on the methodology to elaborate the results of the coungtry's first post-war census, raising fears that publication might not be possible by the July 1 legal deadline.

Divergences on Bosnia's foreign policy priorities are growing between the Bosnian government and Republika Srpska, the country's Serb-dominated entity, experts say.

"Although Republika Srpska is just an entity inside Bosnia, they have different perceptions of their foreign policy goals," Sead Turcalo, a political sciences professor in Sarajevo, told BIRN on Monday.

A Bosnian NGO has filed criminal complaints against Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, accusing him of inciting hatred for describing Bosniaks as ‘Turks’.

Bosnia's state prosecution on Friday asked the state court, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to detain Slobodan Pavlovic, the owner of Pavlovic Bank, for 30 days together with Petar Lazic, the former bank director, Ljiljana Garic, an employee in the department for credits and Blago Blagojevic, a former employee of Pavlovic's company Slobomir.

Bosnian state police, SIPA, on Thursday arrested Slobodan Pavlovic, owner of the Pavlovic Bank, which is at the centre of a controversy over a villa in Belgrade bought by the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik.

Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik yielded to growing internal and international pressure on Monday and announced he was postponing the disputed referendum which had threatened to raise ethnic tensions in the country.

The Bosnian Serb presidency told BIRN that events to mark Republic Day would go ahead on January 9, despite the fact that the annual holiday celebrating the entity's foundation was ruled unconstitutional by the state Constitutional Court because it discriminates against non-Serb residents of Republika Srpska.

The Republika Srpska government said on Thursday that it has halted all cooperation with the State Investigation and Protection Agency and the state prosecution after they arrested five Bosnian Serbs for alleged war crimes in Bosanski Novi and searched official buildings in the Republika Srpska town for evidence.

Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, told Ratko Mladic’s war crimes trial that the Bosnian Serbs did not have an official wartime policy of ethnically cleansing Bosniaks and Croats.