(ANSA-AFP) - SARAJEVO, MAR 13 - Bosnia's prosecutors on
Wednesday ordered federal police to bring in ethnic Serb leader
Milorad Dodik for questioning as part of an investigation into
his alleged flouting of the country's constitution. Tensions
have soared in the divided Balkan country since Dodik was
convicted last month for defying Christian Schmidt, the
international envoy charged with overseeing the peace accords
that ended Bosnia's 1990s war. Dodik, who leads Bosnia's
Republika Srpska (RS) statelet, remains unrepentant after the
conviction, and helped push through laws forbidding the federal
police and judiciary from entering Bosnia's Serb entity in
retaliation. The laws were later struck down by the
constitutional court. Last week, he ignored a summons from
Bosnia's chief prosecutor for allegedly trying to undermine the
constitution. He further raised tensions by calling on ethnic
Serbs last Friday to quit the federal police force and courts
and join the RS government instead. Federal police "received a
request for assistance" to execute the orders of the
prosecutor's office to bring in Dodik for questioning, Jelena
Miovcic, a spokesperson for the police force, told AFP on
Wednesday. The prosecutors also called for the RS's prime
minister and parliamentary speaker to be brought in for
questioning. An AFP reporter saw RS police armed with automatic
weapons outside Dodik's presidential palace in the statelet's
capital of Banja Luka. Dodik, speaking to media outside the
palace alongside the two other wanted men, said he had no
intention of being arrested. He urged federal police to "not
act" and said: "I trust the Republika Srpska police." He added:
"We did not want such an escalation," and framed his defiance as
"not the defence of some individual, but the defence of our
republic". (ANSA-AFP).
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