Bosnia Fails Again to Form New State Government

An extraordinary session of the Bosnian presidency intended to finally form a new state-level government, known as the Council of Ministers, was cancelled on Tuesday as the country's political crisis deepened further.

The session had only one item on the agenda - a proposal to appoint Zoran Tegeltija as the new chairman of the Council of Ministers, submitted by the Serb member of the country's tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik.

It was cancelled at Dodik's request, although it was clear beforehand that Bosniak and Croat members of the presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, would vote against the proposal.

Their condition for supporting Tegeltija is the submission of Bosnia's Annual National Programme to NATO - a precondition for the activation of Bosnia's NATO Membership Action Plan.

Bosnian Serb leaders strongly oppose joining the Western military alliance.

"I do not think that the session should have been scheduled because it is clear that there is no agreement on the ANP [Annual National Programme]. The solution to this problem is to adopt and send an ANP," Dzaferovic said on Tuesday.

This is the second time that Dodik tried to push the appointment of Tegeltija as chairman of the Council of Ministers. The first attempt failed on August 20 when the tripartite presidency was unable to agree on the agenda for the session and postponed it.

Dodik said that September 5 is the deadline to resolve the dispute, according to an agreement that leaders of the three parties that won most votes in the October 2018 elections signed on August 8.

If they fail to meet the deadline, Dodik has threatened to pull out of agreements that allowed the formation of ethnically-mixed armed forces, the state court and the national...