The Russian Federation is suspending its participation in financing the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR), underscoring that it does not consider Christian Schmidt legally appointed to the High Representative post, Nezavisne Novine daily learned.
Schmidt was appointed last year only with the votes of the Peace Implementation Council Steering Board – the mechanism which supports the OHR’s work- member states after Moscow refused to vote for his appointment at the UNSC.
Moscow was also disgruntled because it received no support in voting against the Steering Board’s conclusions and recommendations, notably conclusions condemning the Serb entity Republika Srpska’s separatist policy.
OHR budget for the 2021/2022 fiscal year amounts to €5,327,627 and the funds for financing the OHR are provided by the member countries of the PIC with the EU being the biggest donor contributing 48% of the budget, followed by the United States with 22%, Japan with 10 percent, the UK with 6.69%, Canada 3.03 percent and Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) 2.5%.
Russia sets aside only 1.2% for the OHR’s annual expenses.
The Russian Embassy in BiH refused to comment stressing that they don’t comment on financial issues of the internal structure of the OHR.
According to the OHR, the Russian Federation announced its position on the issues of the PIC Board meetings in July 2021, noting it would no longer participate in meetings and US Ambassador to BiH Michael Murphy recently said he assumes Russia has decided to leave the PIC considering it no longer participates in ambassadorial meetings and the PIC Steering Board, and it does not pay its OHR membership fee.
But the Russian Embassy in BiH, however, stressed that Russia remains a member of the PIC Steering Board, claiming that there is no mechanism to suspend their participation in this institution’s work.
The Embassy also commented on Schmidt in its statement, reiterating Russia’s principled position on his illegitimacy as High Representative in BiH, but pointed out that Moscow is ready to consider resuming cooperation with Schmidt if and when he receives the necessary consent of the UN Security Council for this function.
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