"All residents of Srebrenica, both Bosniaks and Serbs, would benefit from the special status of this town. (...) I would like this to be seen this way rather than as an attempt at changing the constitutional order by force," the Croat member of the Presidency, Zeljko Komsic, said in Srebrenica.
Following an announcement that all Bosniak returnees would move out of Srebrenica on March 14 unless they were ensured financial support and steps were taken to give the municipality a special status, which would mean its separation from the Bosnian Serb entity, Mayor Abdurahman Malkic called senior officials of the state and the two entities for talks.
However, only state officials and representatives of the government of Bosniak-Croat entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, arrived in Srebrenica, while Republika Srpska officials did not show up for talks.
The Bosniak member of the Presidency, Haris Silajdzic, said that according special status to Srebrenica based on the ruling by the International Court of Justice, which had found that the mass killings of some 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces in the summer of 1995 constituted genocide, was an opportunity for the international community to make up for the mistakes it had made during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Silajdzic said he was disappointed because none of the Western ambassadors attended the meeting although they had been invited.
Unlike the Western ambassadors, ambassadors from Islamic countries did attend.
The Bosnian Serb government said that the Srebrenica meeting was a political manipulation aimed at changing the internal organisation of the country.
"There is legal procedure for changing the Republika Srpska Constitution. We will respond in accordance with the law to any attempts outside that procedure," Republika Srpska premier Milorad Dodik said during a visit to Modrica, adding that the Srebrenica meeting "was not much of an event anyway."
The committee that launched the initiative for the collective relocation of Bosniaks from Srebrenica said that after today's meeting it would consider further steps.