US sanctions two Bosnia and Herzegovina officials for 'destabilising' acts

The United States has imposed sanctions on the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Bosniak-Croat Federation and a top official of the Bosnian Serb entity for acts Washington said threatened the stability of the region.

Marinko Cavara, a member of a nationalist Bosnian Croat party, and Alen Seranic, the Serb Republic health minister, have undermined the US-sponsored pact that ended a 1992-95 war and "democratic processes or institutions," a US Treasury statement said on Monday.

The designations block any US properties the men own and generally bar American citizens from doing any transactions involving those properties.

The sanctions are the latest US move aimed at pressuring nationalist politicians to adhere to the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended a 1992-95 war between the country's Muslims - known as Bosniaks - Croats and Serbs. Some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict.

The accords split the country into autonomous regions - the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation - linked by a multi-ethnic central government.

Cavara has been federation president since 2015.

READ MORE: US sanctions Bosnian Serb leader Dodik over secessionist moves

'Undermining democratic processes'

The Treasury said the sanctions on Cavara were for refusing since 2019 to fulfill his role of nominating judges to the country's highest court from candidate lists compiled by a council formed to ensure an independent judiciary.

"Cavara was additionally designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or for having directly or indirectly engaged in, actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the Western Balkans", the statement said.

Seranic's sanctions were for bolstering the "destabilising" secessionist activities of Russia-backed Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the statement said.

He did this by promoting a law to create a Republika Srpska agency to review new medicines, undermining the national agency with the same role, it said. The law has yet to take effect.

Dodik, the Serb member of the national inter-ethnic tripartite presidency, ignited Bosnia and Herzegovina's worst post-war political crisis by moving to pull his Serb-dominated region out of some national institutions.

READ MORE: Bosnian Serb leader's separatism threatens the fragile peace in the Balkans