ZAGREB, 3 April 2022 - The Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina's state presidency, Milorad Dodik, said on Sunday he did not care what the local government in Dubrovnik thought about the construction of an airport at Trebinje, adding that no attention should be paid to that.

Commenting on the letter which Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Franković had addressed to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zoran Telgetija, asking for suspension of all plans to build the Trebinje airport before assessing the environmental impact of the project, Dodik told the press in Banja Luka that the mayor of Dubrovnik should simply be ignored.

"It's as if someone from Rudo (a small town in eastern Bosnia) wrote a letter to US President Joe Biden," Dodik said.

He said he did not know why the letter was being given attention at all when the only interlocutor to the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the Croatian government and not the Dubrovnik city administration.

In his letter, Franković reminded Telgetija that the airport would be built in highly porous karst terrain only eight kilometres from the source of the River Ombla, which supplies Dubrovnik with drinking water.

Trebinje, a town of barely 30,000 inhabitants, is about 50 kilometres away from the airports at Mostar, Dubrovnik and Tivat.

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ZAGREB, 20 Feb 2022 - Some of the political parties representing Bosniaks, and those describing themselves as civic political parties on Saturday, criticised the conclusions adopted by Bosnia and Herzegovina's Croat umbrella association (HNS BiH), while Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik welcomed the document.

During the extraordinary convention in Mostar, it was said that the Croats will launch the issue of restructuring BiH if them being outvoted at elections isn't brought to an end.

HNS BiH concluded that there are currently no legal or constitutional conditions to call an election.

Should the election be called in any case based on an unconstitutional law, HNS BiH will take all available legal and political steps to oppose the continuation of unlawful moves, the Bosnian Croat leader Dragan Čović said after the meeting.

The Bosniak SDA BiH party as well as the SDP BiH and Our Party ("Naša Stranka" that is the NS party) said on Saturday that they viewed the conclusions as blackmail and that they would not be threatened.

The NS party, along with the SDP BiH party, is boycotting the negotiations on the election legislation overhaul as long as the Bosnian Serb officials are obstructing the state institutions' work, stating that the Mostar conclusions made the things more complicated.

The Serb member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, who is the leader of the SNSD party, said that the problem of one people in Bosnia and Herzegovina should be viewed as the problem of all in the country.

"Ignoring the outvoting of one people (the Croats) in Bosnia and Herzegovina pushes the country into instability in a long run and the responsibility for that lies with those who turn a blind eye to the issue," said Dodik.

Talks between leading Croat and Bosniak parties regarding the electoral reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina will continue next week, it was also said after the extraordinary convention of the Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HNS BiH) in Mostar on Saturday.

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ZAGREB, 14 Dec 2021 - Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said on Monday he doubted the EU would reach a consensus on imposing sanctions against Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, as advocated by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

"Croatia advocates dialogue. It's in our interest to insist on dialogue, to convince all leaders that it's necessary to view and experience Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign and integral country, and that there's no room for any separatism," Grlić Radman said.

Baerbock today took part in a Foreign Affairs Council meeting for the first time in her term and said the efforts to break up BiH were unacceptable and that she lobbied for the existing regime of sanctions to be used against Dodik.

"No one insisted on sanctions in a majority format in the sense that all countries agreed. It was more of a testing of member states' opinions and mood," sad Grlić Radman.

He said he and Baerbock met on the fringes of the meeting for talks on the Croatian-German relations and the Western Balkans.

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ZAGREB, 27 Oct 2021 - Croatian President Zoran Milanović on Tuesday held talks with Milorad Dodik, the representative of the Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the president's office said in a press release.

The meeting with the Serb member of the tripartite BiH Presidency was part of Milanović's activities that are aimed at achieving the stability and functioning of BiH as well as the legitimate representation of all three constituent peoples in line with the Dayton peace agreement, the press release said.

For that purpose, the president already met with Bakir Izetbegović, the representative of the Bosniak people, and with Dragan Čović, the representative of the Croat people, it added.

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ZAGREB, October 12, 2018 - Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who on Sunday was elected the Serb representative on Bosnia and Herzegovina's three-member presidency, has said he will not green-light a possible lawsuit which Sarajevo might lodge with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea against Croatia over the construction of Pelješac Bridge.