Neutral Serbia and RS moving toward NATO - "dangerous"

Neutral Serbia and RS moving toward NATO - "dangerous"

"That's logical, if one takes into account a whole range of historical reasons. One of these facts is that the NATO 20 years ago bombed Serbs in Bosnia, and then Serbia," said Dodik.

Noting that Serbia, after the NATO attack in 1999, declared military neutrality, Dodik said that "it would not be good and would be a dangerous situation" if Serbia remained neutral, while the RS moved toward membership in the western military alliance.

"Another important detail is that one of the main countries that carries out the idea of integrating Bosnia-Herzegovina into NATO is Turkey, which Serbs do not see in a positive light. It is a bad sign," said the RS president.

In addition, Dodik added, "people do not see any benefits of such integration, but only vague promises."

According to the media in the Serb entity, he further said that NATO is "not a politically neutral organization" while "on top of everything, Bosnia-Herzegovina has the problem of complex political relations within the country."

"All of this leads to the fact that the public opinion in the Serb Republic does not support integration into NATO," explained Dodik, stating that he, as president and a politician, "must keep that in mind."

According to him, it is unclear how beneficial EU integration would be, either,considering that "Euro-optimism has declined."

"We cannot be an isolated country, we must be integrated. We are to all intents and purposes being forced to integrate into the EU. It is unclear how good that is. It can be said that the level of Euro-optimism is not what it was a few years ago, both here, both in the Union itself. But, nevertheless, that project is still strong," he added.

Commenting on the future of the Serb entity, he said that the key moment was "to preserve its autonomy" and achieve progress in economic development that would allow a high level of living standards.

As for the entity's political relations with Russia, Dodik said it "understands unconditionally the current political situation and supports the struggle of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people."