Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina

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.

The government of the Serb Republic, RS, has decided to end cooperation with the Court and the Prosecution of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The same applies to the Serb entity's cooperation with the the State Investigation and Protection Agency, it was announced in Banja Luka on Thursday.

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.

Former Bosnian Serb Army serviceman Sekula Babic was charged with murder, looting and other offences against Bosniak civilians in Glamoc in south-west Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

Sonja Karadzic-Jovicevic, who is already a MP in the Republika Srpska entity's parliament, has been tipped for its vice-presidency by the Serb Democratic Party, SDS, which was founded by her father.

High Representative Valentin Inzko on Wednesday called on the Bosnian Serb leadership to accept a recent Constitutional Court ruling that the annual public holiday commemorating the founding of Republika Srpska is unconstitutional because it discriminates against other ethnicities.

Serbian historian Milos Kovic told Ratko Mladic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal that the Bosnian conflict was a secessionist civil war in which all three forces carried out ethnic cleansing.

Leaders of all Republika Srpska's main political parties agreed on Sunday to ask the Bosnian Serb National Assembly to initiate a referendum asking people if they support the recent decision by the Constitutional Court to abolish the annual Republic Day holiday celebrating the entity's foundation.

Bosnia's State Intelligence and Protection Agency, SIPA, raided the premises of Pavlovic International Bank in the northeastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina on Wednesday.

They entered the bank "under a mandate given by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is investigating a possible case of illegal transactions", the spokesperson of SIPA confirmed to BIRN.

Bosnian police on Nov. 18 arrested five wartime officers and an ex-politician, all ethnic Serbs, suspected of involvement in the deaths of hundreds of civilians during the country's 1990s conflict.