SARAJEVO (Reuters) -The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday lifted sanctions on Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik, his allies, and family members and companies related to them, the Office of Foreign Assets Control announced.
OFAC did not explain why it removed dozens of Dodik’s closest allies, including government ministers, his son and daughter and companies related to them. But Serb officials have indicated that they have been working secretly on establishing a new kind of relationship with the United States.
Dodik is the former president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic who was stripped of his mandate in August over a court verdict banning him from politics. He has been under U.S. sanctions since 2017 for flouting the Dayton peace treaty that ended Bosnia’s 1990s ethnic war and kept the country intact.
Dodik, a pro-Russian nationalist, has advocated the secession of the Serb Republic from Bosnia and refused to resign as its president.
However, on October 18 Bosnian Serb lawmakers appointed an interim president, acknowledging officially for the first time that Dodik was stepping aside after a state court banned him from politics. The temporary president, a Dodik ally, will serve until early presidential elections scheduled for November 23.
The parliament also annulled a series of separatist laws that were passed over the past year after Dodik had been indicted for defying decisions of Bosnia’s international peace envoy and the constitutional court.
The U.S. State Department welcomed the moves, saying they were the results of U.S.-led efforts “to defuse the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Mark Heinrich)
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