A New York Times report has raised questions about what two key political operatives for US President Donald Trump were doing visiting pro-Russian politician Milorad Dodik in Bosnia and Herzegovina ahead of parliamentary elections there on Sunday. According to sources cited by the US newspaper, James Blair and Chris LaCivita advised Dodik and were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work. The revelation has triggered a wave of criticism from within the Republican Party.
Blair currently runs Trump’s main fundraising organisation, MAGA Inc, while LaCivita is a senior adviser to Trump. Blair, who has previously served as Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and LaCivita have not commented on the visit. The Bosnian Serb is a pro-Russian politician in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He last met Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 29 in Moscow in a notably cordial meeting, just five days before Bosnia and Herzegovina’s general election. Last November, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the country’s highest – upheld a ban on Dodik from formally running in this year’s October 4 elections, after a Sarajevo court convicted him of refusing to comply with decisions issued by the international envoy overseeing the country’s peace deal. The former president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic – or Republika Srpska – was sentenced in February to one year in prison for defying Christian Schmidt, the German diplomat responsible for safeguarding the 1995 peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war in the 1990s.
He was also banned from holding political office for six years and stripped of his post as president. Dodik nevertheless campaigned for the election. His pro-Russian, nationalist SNSD party went on to celebrate major wins on multiple levels.
It won more than 55 percent of votes in regional elections, maintaining its strong grip on power in the Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska. Dodik has led Republika Srpska since 1998, with brief interruptions. He advocates the secession of the entity, established in 1995 under the Dayton Peace Agreement and its eventual unification with neighbouring Serbia – a position that has raised fears of a new conflict in the country and the wider region.
Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was achieved in 1995 after four years of bloody conflict and genocide against Bosniak Muslims, under pressure from the administration of US President Bill Clinton, at a US military base in Dayton, Ohio. The agreement therefore became known as the Dayton Peace Agreement. Ironically, Dodik then came to power with the backing of the US administration, as an alternative to the Serbian nationalists who dominated the political scene at the time.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
