The Minister of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Zukan Helez (SDP) said, after assuming this duty and reviewing the situation, that it is extremely important to work on improving the working conditions of the Armed Forces of BiH (AFBiH), raising their standards and bringing them closer to the standards of the NATO alliance, which should be and the ultimate goal for BiH.
Defense Minister Zukan Helez previously held the position of federal minister for veterans’ affairs and says that this experience will be useful in his work in his new position.
In the past mandate period, Helez was a deputy in the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly and a member of the Security Commission and is quite familiar with the situation in the AFBiH, their structure, the scope of work, level of training, and other segments.
“Our Armed Forces must be better equipped, with a better material status of the members of the Armed Forces, they must be more efficient in the realization of their goals and tasks and organized in accordance with NATO standards,” Helez stressed.
BiH’s path towards NATO membership is one of the country’s two most important foreign policy goals, and Minister Helez believes that the path as a NATO alliance is perhaps more important than joining the European Union (EU) at the moment, given the current security situation.
”When it comes to political actors in BiH, it is obvious that we do not all have the same view of BiH’s path towards the NATO alliance. However, strategic political decisions have long been made at the BiH level when it comes to the NATO alliance, and I don’t think there will be any major difficulties in handing over the annual defense plan,” Helez adds.
