Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković announced on Tuesday that two officials from the Serbian Embassy in Sarajevo have been declared persona non grata and given 48 hours to leave the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At an extraordinary press conference the second in two days Konaković said the decision was made in accordance with the regulations governing the declaration of individuals as undesirable.
The two officials are Milan Dulanović, military attaché at the Serbian Embassy, and Darko Maksimović, an adviser to the representative of Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) at the embassy.
“These two individuals have 48 hours to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Konaković said, adding that their diplomatic cards would be revoked.
“They have been expelled from Bosnia and Herzegovina in accordance with the powers we have, and we call on them to strictly respect the rules of our state,” he said.
Konaković also announced that he is considering reviewing the number of diplomats and staff working at the Serbian Embassy in Sarajevo.
He said one of the issues that influenced the Bosnian authorities’ position was a photograph bearing the inscription “Pravac Potočari” (“Direction: Potočari”), referring to recent developments in Serbia.
“It is better that our people do not stop in such a Belgrade, in such a Serbia, and with such a Vučić. We are reducing the number of our people at the embassy there,” Konaković said.
The Bosnian minister also said that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was the organizer of what, in his view, has taken place in Serbia in recent days, including controversial messages displayed during the match between Crvena Zvezda and Partizan.
Regarding the European Union’s response, Konaković said he appreciated the fact that the EU had corrected its initial statement, but argued that the second statement was still not sufficiently clear.
Finally, Konaković announced that Bosnia and Herzegovina had withdrawn its consent to sign a joint declaration on good-neighborly relations and regional cooperation.
“The declaration was supposed to be signed in Montenegro on October 1. We have withdrawn our consent. We will not sign such declarations as long as we have such a Serbia of the 1990s, which we are seeing these days,” Konaković said.
