Konakovic Expels Two Diplomats From Serbia's Embassy
Bosnia's Foreign Minister Elmedin Konakovic ordered Serbia's military attache and a BIA liaison in Sarajevo to leave within 48 hours, a day after Ratko Mladic's funeral in Belgrade.
A day after Ratko Mladic’s funeral in Belgrade, the diplomatic dispute between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina produced a concrete measure with legal weight. On September 8, Bosnia’s Foreign Minister in the Council of Ministers, Elmedin Konakovic, declared two staff members of Serbia’s Embassy in Sarajevo undesirable and ordered them to leave the country within 48 hours. For Belgrade, the move matters because it is the first time in this crisis that Serbian diplomatic personnel have been forced to physically leave the Bosnian capital on a direct order from a Bosnian minister, rather than by their own decision.
“Today I made the decision to declare the military attache at the Embassy of Serbia, Milan Dulanovic, and the adviser representing the BIA (Security Information Agency) at the Embassy of Serbia undesirable persons. They have 48 hours to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Konakovic said at a press conference in Sarajevo.
Accounts differ on the name of the second diplomat. The Tanjug news agency and the Srpskainfo news outlet report that Konakovic named him Darko Maksimovic in the same statement, while the Sarajevo-based outlet Klix, quoting the same remarks, gives the name as Danko Maksimovic. Which spelling is correct cannot be confirmed from the available reports.
The legal basis for the expulsion
According to all the available reports, Konakovic cited the Rulebook on the Manner of Declaring a Person Undesirable or Unacceptable, adopted by the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004. Under that rule, the Presidency has the authority to expel ambassadors and consuls, while the foreign minister holds separate authority to declare other diplomatic and non-diplomatic staff of foreign missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina undesirable. A military attache and an intelligence liaison, such as the BIA representative, fall into that second category.
Konakovic also announced a broader step: Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said, will withdraw from several agreements with Serbia, including its consent to a joint declaration on good neighborly relations, since both sides had signed it. That would eliminate one of the few formal frameworks for bilateral cooperation still in place, at a time when political communication between Sarajevo and Belgrade has already been reduced to an exchange of accusations.
A day earlier, a withdrawal from Belgrade
The expulsion order was not an isolated move. A day earlier, on September 7, the same minister had announced the withdrawal of part of the staff of Bosnia’s Embassy in Belgrade, in response to Serbian officials paying tribute to Ratko Mladic at his funeral, which five ministers of the Serbian government attended alongside a funeral service led by Patriarch Porfirije. Two decisions on two consecutive days, one directed at Belgrade and one at Sarajevo, point to an escalation that is no longer confined to statements and has moved into concrete diplomatic measures with deadlines attached.
Reactions split along national lines
The decision immediately divided the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina along national lines. Mladjen Bosic, a member of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, described the move as a staged provocation.
“Elmedin Konakovic’s decision to declare the two diplomats undesirable is a scripted political act meant to raise interethnic tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Bosic told the Srna news agency.
Milan Petkovic, also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, offered a similar assessment with a different emphasis, arguing the motive was tied to the upcoming election as much as to politics.
“For the sake of cheap political points and his campaign, Elmedin Konakovic decided to abuse his position as foreign minister in the Council of Ministers and undermine sound diplomatic practice,” Petkovic told Srna.
Political figures from Republika Srpska went further, questioning the minister’s authority to make such decisions at all. Radovan Kovacevic, an SNSD (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) delegate in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that scaling back diplomatic relations with Serbia cannot be a unilateral decision by the minister, since under the constitution foreign policy is the responsibility of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a collective body, not of a single member acting through his own ministry.
A campaign issue ahead of October 4
The dispute is unfolding within an increasingly tight timeframe. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s elections are set for October 4, and Petkovic’s accusation that Konakovic timed the decision to his campaign fits into a broader pattern in which foreign policy toward Serbia is being used as a domestic political argument. Whether the 48 hour deadline will pass without further steps, or will be followed by a new measure from Belgrade, depends on how Serbia’s Foreign Ministry chooses to respond to the expulsion of two of its own personnel. No response had arrived as of this writing.
