EU urges neighbors to defuse tensions in Bosnia
The EU urged Serbia and Croatia on Friday to help defuse growing tensions in neighboring Bosnia, which are undermining stability there, 15 years after a civil war that killed nearly 100,000 people.
“Our joint interest is to have a stable Bosnia,” EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after meeting with Croatia’s new president, Ivo Josipovic.
At the same time, Serbian Prime Minister Cvetkovic held talks in Brussels with EU President Herman van Rompuy, who said regional cooperation was vital in safeguarding stability in the Western Balkans.
Top EU and NATO officials have expressed concern at rising tensions in Bosnia following the collapse in October of a Western-backed effort to revise the country’s constitution.
Both Croatia and Serbia exert strong influence on their ethnic kin in Bosnia, who are united in a lose confederation with the Bosniak majority. Ethnic Serbs have threatened to hold a referendum on independence, if they are forced into a closer union, which Bosnia’s other two communities support.
The EU and the United States have been seeking to streamline Bosnia’s complex political system, which was put in place by the agreement hammered out in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995.
The accord divided Bosnia into two entities, the Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation. But in practice the system has proven too decentralized and unwieldily, and has blocked the country from moving closer to European Union membership.
The constitution also created an enormous and expensive administration with three presidents, three parliaments and several hundred ministers on various levels in a country of 3.5 million people.
The EU still maintains a garrison of about 2,000 soldiers in Bosnia, the remnant of a U.S.-led force of 60,000 soldiers deployed to keep the peace in 1995.
Tensions between the ethnic groups also have been exacerbated by two other developments:
-The arrest this week in London of former Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic after Serbia issued an arrest warrant accusing him of war crimes in connection with the 1992 deaths of Serbian troops in Bosnia. He is viewed as a hero by many Muslim Bosniaks.
-A statement by Radovan Karadzic, wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, at the international war crimes tribunal that he was protecting Serbs against a fundamentalist Muslim plot.
In a related development, the prime ministers of Croatia and Slovenia and Serbian President Boris Tadic met in the Slovenian town of Ptuj Friday to discuss closer integration between the nations of the western Balkans.
Relations have been strained recently over the recognition by Slovenia and Croatia of Kosovo, a Serbian province that has been an international protectorate since a brief war in 1999. Serbia insists that Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 is illegal.
SLOBODAN LEKIC
March 05, 2010
Associated Press correspondents Snjezana Vukic in Zagreb, Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo and Jovana Gec in Belgrade contributed to this report.
EU urges neighbors to defuse tensions in Bosnia
COMMENT !!!.
IF SERBIA INTEGRATE RESPUBKICA SPSKA INTO SERBIA,
AND,
CROATIA INTEGRATE THE CROATIAN PART OF BOSNIA IN TO CROATIA,
ALL TENSIONS WILL BE GONE.
Aquiliaa.
yes true,
Kosovo and RSK back to Serbia only then peace will be a option.
the west needs to come on board on the Serbian issues and stop playing the good guy and support Serbia as it should then there might be peace.
Dusko.
If i was a Serb i would tell the so called West to go to Hell for what they have done to the FRY and then Serbia I can’t understand why any Serb would want to work with these countries after all the bombing and still in occupation of Serbian land.
Dony, your statement hits the nail right on the head.
Bosnia?
This is a failed state!
It is a fantasy derived by the sick imperialists in the EU & the US!
As for Croatia, it is nothing more than a puppet of Germany.
It has clearly reaffirmed its links to its Nazi past by threatening war on the Republic of Srpska.
Despicable!
If those NAZI pigs start another war the Serbs should make sure they finish it next time.
Predrag, Croatia will not do anything to Republika Srpska. They have no intention of helping the muslims if they dont get anything out of it and the muslims have nothing to offer. Instead, they will most likely fake an attack and create a secret pact with the serbs to dissove Bosnia once and for all because this is how they always act, only for themselves.
Whenever I want to read antiSerb article or find links to many foreign articles of that type I come here on Serbiana…
Thank you for supporting totally non-democratic pressure on the Bosnian Serbs by publishing western propaganda and contributing to the pressure on R. Srpska to renounce basic right on self determination.
War was orchestrated by Germany & USA (by recognition of Bosnia & Croatia without any attempt to make peace).
And now having situation that those who pushed Serbs into that war and were pushing them to sign Dayton agreement are now pushing them out of Dayton agreement to live together with their enemies makes me disgusted…That is basic example of injustice and lawlessness.
But God see everything…