SERB LEADERS SEEKING TO SPLIT UP BOSNIA

MILORAD DODIK complains that treaty creating his country favored Muslims.

Milorad Dodik would like to make things clear at the outset : that he is the president of a legitimate state, rather than an ethnically cleansed territory -

In a country with internationally recognized borders; and that at 58, he can still shoot hoops like a pro.

On basketball, he has a point. He plays regularly and although he never played professionally outside the former Yugoslavia, once an international powerhouse in the sport, he showed a good game on a court in St Petersburg, Russia-

Last summer when he joined a veterans team, led by a former NBA star Andrei Kirilenko, against Moscow old-timers.

He is wrong on the residency, though.

Despite his determination to break the Muslim-Croat part of the Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Dodik the president of the Serb autonomous region, a slice of territory nearly the size of Belgium.

The region likes to call itself the Republic Srpska - a name given to the blood-soaked land by Mr. Dodik's predecessor, Radovan Kardzic, the convicted war criminal serving a 40 year sentence for genocide against Bosnia's Muslims

During the two years as president of the Republika Srpska - and two more as prime minister - Mr. Dodik has ruffled more than a few feathers.

Despite warnings from the international community, and in violation of ruling from Bosnia's highest court, he pressed for a referendum in 2016 on whether to celebrate Jan 9 as a national holiday, the day in 1992 -

Mr. Karadzic declared a Serb only state in Bosnia, unleashing a genocidal war.

After the measure passed overwhelmingly, the United States imposed sanctions on Mr. Dodik for undermining the postwar order set up by the Dayton peace agreement in 1995.

As Mr. Dodik continues to undermine the country's central authority in Sarajevo, Western diplomats fear the vote was only a prelude to a second referendum, this time on independence.