Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) Nebojsa Radmanovic has confirmed it was true that Turkey proposed a declaration which contained parts of the (already signed) Istanbul Declaration and that the text of the document was unacceptable for Republika Srpska (RS) and as such could not be a matter of discussion at the recent trilateral meeting in Karadjordjevo (Vojvodina).

“I think President (of Turkey Abdullah) Gul immediately understood my remark that we cannot discuss internal matters, because the declaration had a section on BiH. Thus, we did not reach a declaration at all, but rather a joint statement that says exactly what it should,” Radmanovic said in an interview for the daily Glas Srpske, based in Banja Luka.

He said that the draft declaration included, inter alia, a section concerning the Euro-Atlantic integration of the region as a whole, which he as the chairman of the BiH Presidency had found unacceptable.

The other participants of the meeting also agreed that in addressing the press, we should talk about European integration. In the RS there is no mood for joining NATO, and as a representative of the Serb people and their interests, I could not accept the part of the document which deals with the Alliance, and this part was totally thrown out, said Radmanovic.

He, however, assessed as good the messages from the recently held meeting between BiH, Serbia and Turkey in Karadjordjevo.

“Summing up the results of everything that took place there, I think they are good. In just one day, we had both the trilateral meeting and bilateral talks with Serbia and Turkey. In my opinion, what is essential is the multilateral peace agreement,” Radmanovic concluded.