After talks with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic in Banja Luka on Monday, the President of the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, called on Croat refugees to return to their homes in Republika Srpska, promising that they would be safe.
Dodik made the statement after meeting Josipovic who arrived in Banja Luka to receive the Person of the Year Award of the readers of the local Nezavisne Novine daily.
"The message of this meeting, as far as I am concerned, is that we guarantee that Croats can return here. We guarantee that they will be safe and call on them to return," Dodik said.
He expressed readiness to visit any part of Croatia to talk to refugees from the Bosnian Serb entity about the conditions which the entity authorities could provide them with, saying that he also expected that Croatian Serb refugees would return to their homes.
"I think that this is the issue that can best relax relations between the two communities and the two republics," he said.
Dodik said that he and Josipovic also discussed economic issues considering the fact that Croatia is one of the most important foreign trade partners of Republika Srpska and that their trade in 2010 had gone up 25 percent from 2009.
Dodik said the fact that Josipovic had visited the Serb entity twice in a relatively short period of time was proof of "his wish to deal with existing problems in the best possible way – through dialogue".
"Cooperation, mutual respect and dealing with problems must be our message," Dodik said.
Josipovic said that the meetings he held in Banja Luka today proved that the political elites in the region must work primarily on reconciliation and establishment of democratic processes and on building confidence and creating conditions for everyone to return to their own home.
He said that both Republika Srpska and Croatia had a lot to do in order to make it possible for everyone wishing to return to their prewar homes to do so and to make the return sustainable, adding that economic cooperation and creation of new jobs was crucial to that process.
"The policy of sustainable returns is an obligation that must be assumed by all countries," he said.
Speaking of refugee return, Josipovic said that Dodik's visit to Croatia and his talks with associations working on the return of refugees to Bosnia's northern Posavina region and other parts of the Serb entity would be a very important step, confirming that Croatian authorities were doing and would continue doing their best to enable all refugees to return to their homes in Croatia, regardless of their ethnic background.
