Accession to NATO, as well as stability in the region, are both priorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign policy, the country’s Foreign Minister, Elmedin Konaković, said in an interview for BTA before his official visit to Bulgaria.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina has clear priorities in its foreign policy, above all in terms of joining the European Union, along with a focus on NATO integration.
Due to the specificity of the Balkans, we have also identified the stability of the region as one of the key processes and we hope that we will make some progress in this area as well,” Konaković said.
In Konaković’s words, the main obstacle in the Bosnian NATO integration process is that the political representatives of the entity of Republika Srpska do not support the country’s membership in the alliance.
The two constituent parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina are also linked through the institutions at the state level, including the judiciary, army, security services and tax administration, but at the same time have their own governments, parliaments and police forces.
The leaders of the entity of Republika Srpska are of the opinion that Bosnia and Herzegovina should remain militarily neutral and are against the country’s membership in the alliance.
This is precisely the greatest problem, Konaković added, particularly in terms of the speed of the country’s accession to NATO, noting that the previous authorities had decided that Bosnia and Herzegovina shift from “NATO integration” to the field of “cooperation with NATO”.
The BiH Foreign Minister pointed out that at the moment it is difficult to set precise timeframes for when the country could join NATO and the EU.
Konaković assessed the political cooperation between Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina as very fair, with open options to deepen this cooperation in the field of economy, tourism, trade, culture and sports.
He added that Bosnia and Herzegovina could benefit from Bulgaria’s experience in acceding to the EU, as the two countries are close geographically and have a close heritage and similarities related to the past.
