Milorad Dodik offers asylum to Kosovo Serbs

“I am offering Kosovo Serbs a place in Republika Srpska (RS)." Milorad Dodik's announcement was thought so important that Blic gave it a bigger headline than Serbian Patriarch Irinej's Christmas message — most Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on January 7. In an interview with the Serbian daily, the President of the Serbian entity of Bosnia has advocated the simple partition of Kosovo.

Directly interfering in Serbia’s relations with its former province, the RS strongman declared that “both Serbia and Kosovo will have to definitively identify their territory, because Serbs and Albanians are apparently unable to live together.” Dodik is therefore proposing that the North of Kosovo, which is home to the bulk of the minority Serb population, be incorporated into Serbia, and that Serbs living to the south of the river Ibar who cannot be rehoused in Serbia, move to the Serbian entity in Bosnia, where he is pledging to provide them “with land and aid to build houses and farms.”

Arguing that the EU will ultimately demand that Serbia recognise the independence of Kosovo as a condition for accession to the European Union, the Bosnian Serb President criticised Brussels for making Serbia “a candidate country without setting a date for negotiations” and insisted that “Europe will not want Serbia while a permanent solution for Kosovo has yet to be found.”