BOSNIA - BRCKO AMENDMENT PASSES: A VICTORY FOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 SARAJEVO 000386

SIPDIS

EUR/SCE (HYLAND, FOOKS); NSC FOR HELGERSON; OSD FOR BEIN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/27/2019
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINR KDEM BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA - BRCKO AMENDMENT PASSES: A VICTORY FOR
BRCKO, BOSNIA, AND THE USG

REF: A. SARAJEVO 279

B. SARAJEVO 174

C. SECSTATE 25264

Classified By: Ambassador Charles English. Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

The Majority Speaks: Yes to Brcko
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1. (SBU) Two months of negotiating a constitutional amendment
on Brcko District (Ref A) -- and thirteen years of USG
engagement to make Brcko a self-sustaining, multiethnic
district -- culminated in the amendment's overwhelming
support in both houses of Parliament. The House of
Representatives (HoR) convened a special session on March 25
-- simultaneously with the PIC -- to hold the second, final,
reading on the Brcko amendment. Of the 40 delegates present,
36 -- including Haris Silajdzic's Party for BiH (SBiH) --
voted in favor. (Note: One delegate each from SBiH and
Milorad Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats,
SNSD, was ill and could not attend the session. All other
delegates were present. End Note) Both delegates from the
Serb Democratic Party (SDS) abstained, and Momcilo Novakovic
from Dragan Cavic's new Democratic Party (DS) did not vote.
The only delegate who voted against the amendment was Hadzi
Jovan Mitrovic from the Democratic People's Alliance (DNS).
The only approved change to the amendment was the technical
proposal by Party of Democratic Action (SDA) HoR delegate
Sefik Dzaferovic to add a clause stating when the amendment
will take effect. Four other parties -- SBiH, DS, SDS, and
DNS -- proposed changes to the text, but SBiH and DS withdrew
their proposals just before the vote. The two remaining
amendments were rejected with 26 votes against. In the House
of Peoples (HoP),the amendment passed on March 26 with 14
votes in favor and one (SDS) abstention. The amendment will
take effect on April 3.

A Cornered Silajdzic Acquiesces
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2. (C) Most major parties consistently supported the
amendment throughout the process, but SBiH -- and in
particular party president Silajdzic and his close advisors
-- made an ardent effort to derail it from the beginning.
Silajdzic publicly spoke out against the amendment on
February 8, immediately after the amendment moved to the
Council of Ministers (Ref B); the next day his advisors began
circulating a legal brief against the amendment. Silajdzic
thereafter kept quiet in public, but his advisors and NGO
allies -- encouraged by his advisors -- engaged in a public
campaign against the amendment, unscrupulously supporting and
fueling conspiracy theories that accused the USG of using the
amendment to precipitate the division of Bosnia. Silajdzic's
people further accused the Embassy and PDHR Gregorian of
pursuing a policy on Brcko divorced from that of Washington,
suggesting that Chief Arbiter Owen and Washington principals
opposed the amendment and accusing PDHR Gregorian,
Ambassador, and others of "lying" about Owen's and
Washington's positions. Silajdzic's decision to reverse
course and instruct his party to support the amendment was
only made the day before the vote in the HoR. We believe
Silajdzic backed off for several reasons:

-- First, we and OHR moved quickly to secure the support of
all other major parties in February, isolating Silajdzic --
including among Bosniak parties -- and maintain it in the
weeks leading up to the vote.

-- Second, we worked behind the scenes to explai the
amendment to the major Bosniak media outlets and debunk
SBiH's false claims about it. As a result, the outlets
carried favorable coverage of the amendment throughout the
process, culminating in editorial endorsements by the two
most influential Bosniak dailies the week of the vote.

-- Third, Secretary Clinton's letter to Foreign Minister
Alkalaj endorsing the amendment (Ref C),which was delivered
the weekend before the vote and which Alkalaj shared with the
Presidency, gave Silajdzic notice that Washington in fact
supported the amendment. Its subsequent publication in two
dailies made that point clear to the Bosnian public.

-- Fourth, Silajdzic confronted dissension within the SBiH
ranks over his initial decision to oppose the amendment,

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which many -- including SBiH's Brcko members -- viewed
positively. Many in the party remain angry with Silajdzic's
failure to take the 2008 municipal elections more seriously
and blame him for the party's drubbing by SDA. Though
Silajdzic retains control of SBiH, the municipal election
fiasco heightened his subordinates' inclination to challenge
him.

-- Fifth, isolated, out-maneuvered, and facing dissent within
his own party, Silajdzic had no choice but to join the
consensus, albeit grudgingly. Despite his longstanding
opposition to the amendment and his attempts to derail it, we
expect Silajdzic will now highlight his party's support for
it and claim that this proves his willingness to compromise
and play a constructive role in Bosnian politics. (Note:
Alkalaj, an SBiH minister, has already begun to do this,
claiming for himself the success of turning around
Silajdzic's position, in fulfillment of his promise to Deputy
Secretary Steinberg to do so. End Note.)

Comment: What the Passage Means
--------------


3. (C) The passage of this amendment is a victory on several
fronts: 1) as the country's first constitutional amendment,
it may open the door for step-by-step constitutional reform
(see paragraph 4); 2) it restores some of the credibility the
USG lost after the failure of the April package; 3) it closes
the door on an essential requirement for OHR closure; 4) it
affords Brcko District the constitutional protections it
needs to sustain itself after the closure of Supervision; and
5) it undercuts Haris Silajdzic's standing among Bosniaks and
potentially undermines the appeal of his counterproductive
"all or nothing" agenda. We should not expect an about-face
on Silajdzic's approach to constitutional reform or other
issues, but most observers see Silajdzic as a political loser
in the Brcko amendment battle.

Comment: All Eyes on Constitutional Reform
--------------


4. (C) The deliberation in both Houses of Parliament
preceding the vote underscored that many parties view the
Brcko amendment as the first step in a broad constitutional
reform process. During the PIC, SDA chairman Sulejman Tihic
noted that the Prud troika -- including Dodik and Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ)-BiH chairman Dragan Covic -- agreed to
launch an initiative in Parliament to begin reform talks,
though it is unclear just what the three men have in mind.
Parties will look to the USG to determine what role we will
play in the reform process. We will need to think about how
to respond, considering that reform talks without a strong
USG role would be unlikely to produce constructive,
sustainable results and, as the Prud-inspired debates on
constitutional reform make clear, could further inflame
ethnic tensions. Should we choose to engage, we will need to
consider the process, parameters, substance, and timing of
any US-led constitutional reform process. Two of our key
challenges will be engaging the Serbs, who have expressly
rejected the idea of international brokering of the reform
process, and managing the Bosniaks -- especially Silajdzic's
siren call that constitutional reform should abolish the
Republika Srpska.
ENGLISH