CSS: BiH Council of Ministers persistently blocks BiH's path to NATO

(Patria) - For more than five months, no agenda item related to BiH's cooperation with NATO has been on the agenda of the BiH Council of Ministers sessions, thus fulfilling the announcements of representatives from RS, made in August last year, that they would suspend all cooperation activities with NATO, it was announced from the Center for Security Studies.

All attempts by the BiH Commission for Cooperation with NATO, whose work is coordinated by the BiH Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to include materials related to the relevant cooperation on the agenda of the session have been unsuccessful.

"Not even a benign proposal to change the names of the Commission members received the consent of the Council of Ministers Collegium for inclusion on the session agenda, just like multiple attempts to include materials under the title Information on NATO recommendations regarding the document 'Information on the implementation of activities from the BiH Reform Program 2021 and the Bosnia and Herzegovina Reform Program 2022'.
Only membership in the Alliance can provide adequate security guarantees to all citizens of BiH and prevent everyday dilemmas about whether our closest neighbors are arming themselves for defensive or offensive purposes. Also, internal undermining and daily attacks on the constitutional and legal order and the war rhetoric, which is gradually, but increasingly loudly mentioned in public discourse, are just some of the indicators of the necessity to accelerate BiH's path to full membership in NATO.

Therefore, the indolence of the ruling structure from the Federation, embodied in the partners from the Trojka and HDZ BiH, is surprising, allowing their coalition partners so many concessions at the expense of the interests and understandably concerned citizens. Leaving the fight in the area of improving cooperation with NATO solely to the Minister of Defense Helez, who sometimes fights Don Quixote-like for support even within his own party, is truly a discouraging and unstatesmanlike approach by the coalition partners.

Focusing on obtaining negotiating status with the EU is a truly positive and justified approach, but abandoning strategic goals, which are probably more significant for the security and survival of BiH at this moment, cannot and must not be neglected or be the subject of any political bargaining, no matter how appealing it may seem. He who does not learn from his past mistakes is doomed to failure," conclude CSS.