Clinton: Bosnia risks being left behind on EU/NATO path

[Gerald]

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed Bosnia on Tuesday to overcome ethnic infighting and pursue constitutional reforms needed for any chance of joining NATO and the European Union.

"If you do not make progress you will be left behind," Clinton said at the start of a trip with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to three Balkan nations still coming to terms with the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

"We are here today to urge the leaders to put aside their political differences, put aside the rhetoric of dissolution, secession, denial of what tragically happened in the war, for the sake of the young people of this country," Clinton told a news conference after meeting Bosnia's tripartite presidency.

Bosnia remains deeply divided 17 years since the end of its 1992-95 war, which killed 100,000 people before the United States, under then President Bill Clinton, brokered peace at an air base in Dayton, Ohio.

Power is shared uneasily between Serbs, Croats and Muslims in an unwieldy state ruled by ethnic quotas. Bosnia lags behind its ex-Yugoslav neighbors on the road to the EU membership.

Croatia, already a member of NATO, is due to become the second country carved from Yugoslavia to join the EU in July next year. Slovenia did so in 2004.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89T16M20121030


Note: Tue Oct 30, 2012 12:04pm EDT