EU wil Oostenrijker als volgende gezant voor Bosnië (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU foreign ministers on Monday (23 February) agreed that Valentin Inzko – currently Austria's ambassador to Slovenia– should be the bloc's new envoy to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Inzko was also Austria's ambassador to Sarajevo from 1996 to 1999.
The ministers unanimously agreed on his nomination, as the UK's Emyr Parry Jones, former British ambassador to the UN, who was previously seen as the frontrunner, withdrew from the competition.
The British candidate would not have been able to take up the post within the next months due to "other commitments," diplomatic sources told EUobserver.
Meanwhile, the government of Bosnia's Serb Republic (Republica Srpska) said last week that it would not accept a Brit to replace Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, who resigned from his post in January to become Slovakia's new foreign minister.
"The government is expressing strong opposition to the possibility that a candidate from Britain be appointed again to the post of high representative," it said, according to reports from Reuters.
The UK's Paddy Ashdown, who held the post from 2002 to 2005, is seen as biased by Bosnia's Serbs, because he had made extensive use of his powers by sacking a number of Serb officials and taking measures to strengthen the state.
While Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation is in favour of a stronger state, the country's Serbs are strongly attached to the high level of autonomy for Republica Srpska.
The EU nomination of Mr Inzko, who will also hold the post of International High Representative in Bosnia, now has to be approved by the other member states of the Peace Implementation Council – the body regrouping all countries engaged in supervising the peace process in the country.
At the end of last year, EU member states had expressed readiness to "step up" the bloc's role in the country and to work on progressively achieving a "transition from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to a stronger European Union presence."
The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was enshrined in the Dayton peace treaty ending the 1992-1995 Bosnia war.
However, Bosnia's slow pace of reforms is starting to put in doubt the closure of the OHR (planned for June) and consequently the reinforcement of the EU's role.
The new envoy is to be appointed in March.
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