Bosnian Serb leader Dodik calls for Russia's help after arrest warrant

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnian state prosecutors on Wednesday ordered the arrest of Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik and his aides for ignoring a court summons, a move which Dodik pledged to resist with help from Russia in a widening standoff over the fragile country.

The dispute, which pits Dodik and his allies Russia and Serbia against the United States and the European Union, is one of the biggest threats to peace in the Balkans since the 1990s conflicts that followed socialist Yugoslavia's collapse.

It began after Dodik, the president of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic, defied rulings by the international envoy to Bosnia, whose role is to prevent the multi-ethnic Balkan state slipping back into conflict.

Dodik was sentenced to a year in jail and banned from holding office for six years in a court ruling that he can appeal.

In response, Dodik initiated laws barring state judiciary and police from the region. The state prosecutors' office then opened an investigation into what it described as an attack on constitutional order.

On Wednesday, it asked for Dodik's arrest for failing to respond to a court summons, although it was unclear whether it intended to detain him and his allies or just accompany them to court.

"This is a null and void business," Dodik said at a press conference in the region's centre Banja Luka, showing the arrest warrant. "This is politically motivated and we don't want to take part in it."

Dodik is planning to hold high-level meetings with Russian representatives in the coming days, Russia's TASS state news agency reported on Wednesday. Dodik told the press conference he would ask Russia to veto the extension of the European peacekeeping mission for Bosnia in the United Nations Security Council, which is due in November.

The EU peacekeeping force, EUFOR, said on Tuesday that it had begun deploying reserve forces in Bosnia to maintain stability and security. It declined to give the number of troops but hundreds of new soldiers are expected to arrive.

The State Investigation and Protection Agency confirmed it has received a request to assist the state court police in apprehending Dodik, the region's Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic and parliament president Nenad Stevandic.

Both officials dismissed the state court and prosecution as "unconstitutional institutions" at the press conference.

Serb Republic Interior Minister Sinisa Karan said the region's police will act in accordance with Serb Republic legislation barring the state judiciary from its territory.

"Nobody will be arrested and everyone will be protected," Karan told the ATV television.

RUSSIA VS THE WEST

Bosnia's Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation are two regions created after Bosnia's 1992-95 war in which 100,000 died. They are linked by a weak central government in a state supervised by an international authority, known as the high representative, currently Christian Schmidt.

On Wednesday, the Serb region's parliament convened in a bid to adopt a new constitution for the Serb Republic, which would annul all reforms agreed in decades following the signing of the US-backed Dayton peace agreement that ended the war.

Schmidt warned that changing the constitution was a violation of the peace deal and represented "a serious danger".

He called on MPs to reject "this attack on the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the multi-ethnic character of Republika Srpska".

Dodik on Wednesday said he planned to label Schmidt's office a "criminal organisation" in the Serb Republic.

Russia, Serbia and Hungary have supported Dodik, who has said his region should split from Bosnia and join Serbia. Moscow has called the Bosnian court's ruling "a strike on stability in the Balkan region".

U.S. State Department Secretary Marco Rubio, however, said that Dodik's actions were undermining Bosnia's institutions and threatening its security and stability, calling on U.S. partners in the region "to join us in pushing back against this dangerous and destabilizing behavior".

His statement was a blow to Dodik who hopes that President Donald Trump's administration will favor the Serb separatist agenda.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Philippa Fletcher and Edward McAllister)