SARAJEVO (Reuters) -The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday it has removed four allies of former Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik from a sanctions list, in a move praised by Dodik who is campaigning to get U.S. sanctions against himself lifted.
Dodik has been sanctioned by the U.S. and Britain for obstructing the terms of the Dayton peace deal that ended Bosnia’s war in the 1990s, as well as by several European countries who say his separatist policies endanger peace and stability in Bosnia.
He was stripped of his presidential mandate in August, after the state court sentenced him to a year in jail or pay a fine. The court also banned him from political activity for six years for defying orders of an international peace envoy put in place to stop the country falling back into ethnic violence.
Jelena Pajic Bastinac, Danijel Dragicevic, Goran Rakovic and Dijana Milankovic were sanctioned in January for helping organise illegal public celebrations to mark the so-called “Republika Srpska Day”, which Bosnian Serbs celebrated on Jan. 9 in defiance of a top court ban and warnings from Western peace overseers.
The U.S. OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) did not say why the four were removed from the list.
Dodik, who has engaged several lobbyists in the U.S. to help lift sanctions against him, said the sanctions were politically motivated.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic, Editing by William Maclean)
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