The Republic of Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina has enough sovereignty to protect everything that is important for protecting the Serbian people in a given place, said Dušan Kozić, the president of the assembly of the association “Creators of the Republic of Srpska”.

Kozić, who had been elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska in 1994, said that this was a thing to be pleased about, especially when keeping in mind all of the pressure that has been put on Srpska in the last 20 years.

“The times that are ahead, the environment that we are in relative to the events in the world and Europe, are not at all rose-colored,” said Kozić on the occasion of the celebration of the Dayton Peace Agreement’s 27th anniversary.

Looking back at that era, he said that the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its twelve annexes were drafted in November 1995 at the United States Air Force Base Wright-Patterson in Dayton, thereby ending the war, as a problem that was equally oppressive to all.

In his words, Serbs in the Republic of Srpska were not very happy with it at first, seeing as the members of the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska and ministers in the Government of Srpska had had somewhat higher ambitions than what they got.

As the time went by, said Kozić, optimism was coming back more and more, so that after about ten years it was evident that more than 80% of the elements of sovereignty had been accomplished, and that there was a sufficient framework to protect both the people and the Republic of Srpska in its existing format as determined by the Dayton Peace Agreement.