The United States and the European Union combined on Tuesday to push Balkan states to resolve festering political and economic disputes obstructing more integration with the rest of Europe.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton began a three-nation Balkan trip in Bosnia, where a power struggle between ethnic Serb, Muslim and Croat parties has stymied progress since their 1992-95 war.
Clinton’s Balkans trip, probably her last before stepping down early next year, represents her final effort to settle some of the legacies of the bloody break-up of federal Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when her husband Bill Clinton was president.
“We’re disappointed that the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina have not put the interests of the country first,” a senior US official told reporters travelling with Clinton.
In similar vein, Clinton and Ashton will urge Serbia and majority-Albanian Kosovo, which broke away from Belgrade in 2008, to improve their ties further, US officials said.
Bosnia has been governed along ethnic lines since the war, which killed an estimated 100,000 people and split the country into two autonomous regions joined by a weak central government, under the US-brokered 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.
Intense political infighting has slowed reforms, leaving Bosnia lagging its neighbours on the road to EU membership.