The Republika Srpska News Agency (SRNA) in Bosnia and Herzegovina published a claim that “three members of the Presidency of BiH voted against recognizing Kosovo’s independence.” Some media outlets also reported that the Presidency “made a unanimous decision not to recognize Kosovo.” The transcript of the session of the Presidency of this state reveals that none of these claims are true.
The Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina held its regular meeting on 17.09.2020, in which the three members of the body voted on a draft decision for Bosnia and Herzegovina to recognize the independence of Kosovo. The decision was proposed by Željko Komšić, a Croat member of the presidency, who, together with Šefik Đaferović, a Bosniak member of the presidency, voted in favor of this draft decision. While Milorad Dodik, a Serb member of the presidency, voted against. Since there was not enough consensus to adopt the proposed decision, the initiative of the Croat and Bosniak members to recognize Kosovo failed at the meeting on 15 October.
The session began at 1pm that day, and the Republika Srpska News Agency (SRNA) published an article shortly before 3pm claiming that three members of the BiH Presidency were “unanimously against the recognition of Kosovo and Metohija”:
DODIK, DZAFEROVIC AND KOMSHIC UNANIMOUSLY AGAINST THE RECOGNITION OF KOSOVO
According to Srna, in today's session, members of the BiH Presidency, Sefik Xhaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, along with Serbian member of the Presidency, Milorad Dodik, voted against the recognition of the self-proclaimed Kosmet.
Link to the SRNA article:
This alleged news was broadcast, among others, by portals such as Kurir, Alternativna TV, Informer, Banja Luka (.net), Bljesak, Telegraf, Tanjug, Pink, Nezavisne, Pink, Avaz, Radio Sarajevo, Kosova në internet, portal BL, Krupljani, Srpska info, Infosrpska, Pravda and RTS.
Following the Presidency meeting, Milorad Dodik held a press conference at 4 pm on the same date (October 15), which was broadcast live on the Radio Television of the Republic of Srpska (RTRS) channel and on the RTRS news page on Facebook.
Dodik told reporters that “BiH did not recognize Kosovo,” meaning that the BiH Presidency “rejected the decision to recognize Kosovo’s independence.” However, contrary to the claim in the SRNA agency article that the decision was made “unanimously,” Dodik said that he voted against recognizing Kosovo’s independence and that Xhaferovic abstained, while Komsic did not vote at all.
Komšić did not vote, Bosniak member Šefik Đaferović abstained, I was against, which means that BiH did not recognize the self-proclaimed Kosovo – Dodik explained.
Dodik's statement itself was a reason to investigate the reporting of the SRNA news agency. According to research by the Bosnian fact-checking platform "raskrinkavanje.ba", it turns out that the SRNA reporting was untrue and did not correspond to what actually happened.
Other facts that contradict this SRNA reporting are the statements of two other members of the Bosniak Presidency, Xhaferovic and Komsic.
During his statement to the media, Xhaferovic said that the Croatian member of the Presidency, Komsic, requested that the vote on the vote to recognize Kosovo be postponed, but that Dodik had opposed such a thing.
I did not put that item on the agenda today and requested consultations with the members of the Presidency, because it is completely clear that there is no recognition of Kosovo by Bosnia and Herzegovina until a consensus is reached in BiH. Mr. Komšić withdrew that item from the agenda, but in the end Mr. Dodik voted against, while Mr. Komšić and I did not vote at all because we thought that we had nothing to vote on and thus the item on the agenda ended.
Zeljko Komšić's cabinet also denied that the presidency "unanimously rejected the recognition of Kosovo" and confirmed that only Dodik voted for this decision, while the other two members did not vote at all. Commenting on Dodik's claims about the decision, Komšić's cabinet said that "there is no decision."
"This is a lie. Only Dodik voted. Komsic and Xhaferovic did not vote at all"
Link to the announcement from Zeljko Komsic's cabinet:
Analyze:
Based on the facts presented in this research, it turns out that the news agency from the Republika Srpska “SRNA” has misinformed about the decision of the Presidency of BiH to not recognize Kosovo, claiming that the vote against was unanimous by its 3 members. After verifying all these facts, hibrid.info categorizes the SRNA article as “fake news” and “disinformation”.
Reasoning:
Fake News – The “Fake News” rating is given to media reports that are entirely the product of a medium that itself contains factually incorrect claims or information. Content that is rated as fake news can be reliably determined to have been created and distributed with the intent to misinform the public, i.e., to present a claim that is completely false as fact.
Disinformation – A “Disinformation” rating is given to media reporting that contains a “mix” of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful content. This rating will also address reports that have incorrect attributions or headlines that do not reflect the text in terms of accuracy of information.