Bosnia's Serb Republic PM resigns to form wider coalition

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO (Reuters) -The prime minister of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic (RS) said on Monday he would resign from his position, as part of a plan by his Serb ruling party to form a government based on a wider coalition with more decision-making power.

Announcing his move, Radovan Viskovic added he would retain his other senior political roles until the Serb-dominated RS region reached its "ultimate goal" and seceded from Bosnia.

"I will continue to hold important positions, ...I am staying in the SNSD party (The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) until we accomplish our ultimate goal and that is the state of Republika Srpska," Viskovic said, appearing at a press conference along with top party officials.

The crisis sparked by Bosnia's Serb separatist push amounts to one of the biggest threats to peace in the Balkans since the wars that followed Yugoslavia's collapse, pitting the RS government's allies Russia and Serbia against the U.S. and European Union.

RS makes up Bosnia and Herzegovina along with the Federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats under the Dayton peace accords that ended a 1992-95 conflict that killed about 100,000 people and displaced around two million.

The initiative to form a new regional government was launched after the RS nationalist president Milorad Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison and banned from politics for six years for defying the decisions of an international peace envoy and the constitutional court.

Dodik was stripped of office by the election commission earlier this month after an appeals court upheld the first-instance verdict, a decision Dodik immediately rejected, saying it violated the Serb Republic constitution. He was allowed to replace a jail term with a fine under Bosnian law.

Over the past decade, Dodik has strongly advocated the secession of the Serb region from Bosnia and its unification with Serbia.

Dodik had invited the opposition to join his ruling coalition in a new government of national unity but the main opposition parties dismissed his calls.

"We want the RS government to gain a new democratic legitimacy, to be able to respond with its composition to all challenges that are before us," Dodik said at the same news conference on Monday.

He fell short of disclosing which parties would join a new government or who would lead it. Independent legal experts said that a prime minister proposed by a president who was stripped of office by the country's top election authority would be illegal.

The Russian-backed Serb leader announced a referendum on whether he should leave office or not at the end of September.

Pending the referendum outcome, there could be a new referendum on the independence of the Serb Republic, said Dodik.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic, Editing by William Maclean)