The tense relations between the President of the US Donald Trump and the US Senate, the upper house of the US Congress in which are sitting two representatives of every US state, will reflect on BiH as well as the entire region.
Due to the chaos within the White House, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dates for appointing a total of 90 ambassadors and their deputies in the world are uncertain, and appointment of ambassadors in BiH will come into question soon.
When it comes to the appointment of ambassadors, the United States knows two types of ambassadors. There are career diplomats, who are trained for this job and have already performed some functions at the State Department or Embassies. Of 188 ambassadors, there are 123 career diplomats. However, the President of the United States also has the right to appoint around 60 of the so-called “political ambassadors”.
The current Ambassador of the US to BiH Maureen Cormack was formally proposed by President Barack Obama in December 2013, according to the procedure. The Senate, after a multi-month boycott of almost all appointments and proposals due to internal reasons, confirmed her appointment on November 19, 2014. She officially took the office in Sarajevo on January 11, 2015.
According to all indications, the same situation will happen again. Even if in the State Department have some idea of who will be sent in BiH, that kind of proposal has not come to President Trump yet. If the practice was respected, Trump should have proposed the new ambassador to BiH immediately after taking the office on January 20, 2017.
Trump has no ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Australia, and Austria, where the ambassador to the OSCE is expected as well, Belgium, where he should also appoint an ambassador to the European Union, Belarus, Bolivia, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Finland.
Cormack will leave BiH in spring next year, and until the new ambassador is appointed, her current deputy, Paul D. Horowitz, will lead the US Embassy in BiH.
(Source: faktor.ba)
