NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Hina) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's statements should be placed within the frameworks of electoral rhetoric, Bosnia-Herzegovina's Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija said in New York on Friday.
NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Hina) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's
statements should be placed within the frameworks of electoral
rhetoric, Bosnia-Herzegovina's Foreign Minister Zlatko
Lagumdzija said in New York on Friday. #L#
Lagumdzija said he did not view Kostunica's alleged utterance "as
the words of a statesman, but rather of a political candidate in a
not so small an electoral race".
"Fortunately, Belgrade, nor anybody outside of Bosnia's borders
for that matter, is no longer asked for their opinion about the fate
and future of Bosnia, nor do they have any influence over them,"
Lagumdzija said.
During a recent Serbian presidential electoral rally in Mali
Zvornik on the Bosnian border earlier in the week, Kostunica said
that the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska was only
temporarily separated from Serbia.
After a sharp reaction by Bosnian authorities, he tried to explain
that he did not intend to call on secession, but believed that all
countries of the former Yugoslavia should be integrated into Europe
so that the current borders would only be formal.
Lagumdzija on Friday noted that even Kostunica himself, it seemed,
no longer remembered exactly what he had said, but in any case, the
statement "does not speak about the future of Bosnia, but rather
about the past in which the one who said it lives".
(hina) lml