BILJANA PLAVŠIĆ DIES

BELGRADE, OCTOBER 1 /SRNA/ - Former Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavšić died in Belgrade this morning at the age of 95, sources close to the family confirmed to SRNA.

Her funeral is expected to be held in Banja Luka.

Plavšić was a Serbian politician, university professor, and Doctor of Biological Sciences, a member of the Republika Srpska National Assembly and the Serb member of the Presidency of the former Socialist Republic of BiH /SR BiH/.

She was a former dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Sarajevo, a former official of the Serb Democratic Party /SDS/ and a former president of the Serb People's Alliance /SNS/.

Biljana Plavšić was born on July 7, 1930, in Tuzla, in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and grew up in Sarajevo. She graduated in biology from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Zagreb, where she also earned a doctorate in botany, specializing in plant virology. She completed her specialization in the United States as a Fulbright scholar.

As a research scientist, she worked at the Institute of Virology in Prague, the University of Minnesota in California, London, Bari, Tripoli, New Delhi, and elsewhere.

After completing her studies, she became a professor and dean at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Sarajevo. On the eve of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, she left her academic career and entered politics.

In the 1990 elections, she was elected a member of the collective Presidency of BiH.

At the same time, she served as president of the Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order of BiH. In April 1992, on the eve of the outbreak of the war in BiH, she resigned from both positions and joined the Presidency of Republika Srpska.

She left Sarajevo, where the war had already begun, on May 20, 1992, as the last member of the Serb leadership's inner circle to leave the city.

In Republika Srpska, she was one of its two vice-presidents until September 14, 1996, when, under pressure from the international community, Radovan Karadžić transferred his presidential powers to her.

She was elected President of Republika Srpska in the election that year, but in the following presidential election in 1998, she was defeated by Nikola Poplašen, the candidate of the Serb Radical Party /SRS/.

She was expelled from the SDS on July 20, 1997. A month later, she founded the Serb People's Alliance /SNS/ and was elected its president on August 28. At the party's Second Electoral Assembly on May 30, 1998, she was re-elected president of the SNS.

Following the SNS's defeat in the local elections in April 2000, an extraordinary party assembly passed a vote of no confidence in her on June 3. Following the decision, she continued her political activities with 105 delegates who supported her, under the party's original name, “Serb People's Alliance-Biljana Plavšić.”

In mid-December 2000, Plavšić resigned as a member of the Republika Srpska National Assembly for health reasons.

On January 10, 2001, Plavšić voluntarily surrendered to the Hague Tribunal, before which she had been indicted on April 7, 2000.

On February 27, 2003, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison. On June 26, 2003, she was transferred from The Hague to Sweden to serve her sentence at Hinseberg Prison. She was released in late October 2009 and returned to Belgrade after serving two-thirds of her sentence.

In Belgrade, she lived a secluded life and was not politically active. She was divorced and had no children.