Podžić on MAP and IPAP: The law must simply be respected

(Patria) - SNSD's proposals regarding the activation of MAP are increasingly present in the public. Milorad Dodik is openly offering for Bosnia and Herzegovina to abandon the Membership Action Plan (MAP) and turn towards the Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO (IPAP). 

This idea has already been presented to political partners who have the obligation to form a government at the state level in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The existing IPAP that BiH has with NATO would need to be modified, and Dodik would be satisfied. However, it is clear to everyone that IPAP is not MAP's twin brother; it is BiH abandoning NATO.

Apart from SDP, which is in opposition, no other party has yet commented on this proposal. SDA, DF, SBB, and HDZ will form the government with SNSD, so their reaction is most anticipated. Sifet Podžić (DF), most likely the new Minister of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a former Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces of BiH, did not wish to comment much in a statement to Patria.

“I have no comment on that, except that there are laws that must be respected,” Podžić said.

And the laws state that Bosnia and Herzegovina, through previous laws and a decision of the Presidency of BiH, committed to becoming a member of the NATO alliance, which is why it received guidelines from the world's largest military bloc on the conditions to be met before joining NATO.” If Bosnia and Herzegovina now wishes to change its military-political orientation, it would have to pass new laws in the State Parliament. Merely accepting a modified IPAP and abandoning MAP without changing laws, for example, the Law on the Armed Forces of BiH, would be illegal. 

Proponents of BiH's membership in NATO fear that SDA and other parties might present IPAP to their voters as an equally significant step towards NATO as MAP, just phrased differently, while Dodik would present the program to his electorate as “nothing serious”, as Serbia signed it with NATO long ago anyway.