New Year’s reception of the NATO HQ was held last night in Sarajevo in the House of Armed Forces of BiH. Many diplomats, representatives from military, political, academic, religious and culture spheres were greeted by brigadier general Walter Lord, commander of the NATO HQ in Sarajevo.
Lord said: ‘There is much to be done in solving issues of immovable military property, surplus weapons, ammunition and explosives and the reform of logistics sector and procurements. Years of analyses and debates were spent discussing those issues, and now it’s the high time to start solving the issues.’
He stressed that every advanced nation periodically examines defences that shape its defensive structures and strategy.
‘Having that in mind, political leaders of BiH must empower the Minister of Defence to work with us in order to find good and objective analysis about the appropriate roles, missions, size and organisation of the Armed Forces of BiH in future. The result of that process would be the creation of rational armed forces ready to serve the needs of people of BiH’, said Lord.
He noted the good every day cooperation between the NATO HQ Sarajevo and the Ministry of Defence; the progress in preparing the technical basis for the implementation of the political deal about the immovable military property and continued campaign of cooperation with partner embassies with the aim of informing the public of NATO activities, and about the moves that bring BiH closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
BiH Minister of Defence Zekerijah Osmić noted that 13 years, 60 000 international troops were stationed in BiH, and now there are only few hundred with the tendency to decrease even further, which is a huge security improvement.
He added that BiH still has a lot of work to do, but he hopes that the institutions will have the capacity to reach the goal – the establishing of defensive system which would be compatible with the NATO and managing the defence system transparently by the central government.
Charge d’affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey to BiH, who’s also a NATO contact for BiH, said that her country will continue with its regular activities in order to justify the given trust.
She noted that Turkey wants to see peaceful, stable and prosperous BiH, fully integrated into NATO and the EU, and because of that Turkey strongly advocated the activation of the Action Plan for BiH NATO membership at the meeting in Tallin.
