Serbia Leaders to Discuss Referendum With Bosnian Serbs

Serbia's Foreign Minister, Ivica Dacic, said on Tuesday that President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic will meet Bosnian Serb leaders on Thursday to discuss the planned referendum there after it was condemned by the Peace Implementation Council, PIC.

The PIC is the international body charged with implementing the 1995 Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia.

Dacic said talks would concern the position announced earlier on Tuesday by PIC against holding the referendum and "the current situation in general.

"Measures have been agreed on and will be undertaken, and are already being undertaken, to protect our national and state interests, so that people can rest assured that security will not be compromised in the country and, we hope, in the region," Dacic said.

Nikolic convened an urgent meeting in Belgrade on Tuesday after the PIC said it was "advising the Republika Srpska not to hold the referendum, and would not tolerate any violation of the Dayton peace accords, including a secession attempt."

A joint statement by the PIC ambassadors - with the dissenting opinion of the Russian ambassador - said that "the Bosnia-Herzegovina Constitution indisputably establishes that the Bosnia-Herzegovina Constitutional Court's decisions are final and binding and that the entities are obliged to honor the decisions of Bosnia-Herzegovina institutions."

Russian Ambassador Petr Ivantsov left the meeting, saying Moscow could not support a joint statement that "threatens and condemns" the Bosnian Serbs.

The referendum concerns last year's ruling by Bosnia and Herzegovina's Constitutional Court.

It said that the Day of Republika Srpska, marked on January 9, cannot be a state holiday because it coincides with a Serbian...