Đidić: Without US-European Consensus, BiH Risks Deeper Crisis

(Patria) - It is entirely possible that the new High Representative will not be elected even at the next session of the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), believes diplomat and publicist Fuad Đidić.

Đidić was one of the introducers at today's regular session of the Association of Independent Intellectuals Krug 99 on the topic "The US and Europe are breaking over BiH - and where is the voice of citizens?"

Disagreements between the US and EU countries, says Đidić, are not formal but strategic and geopolitical in nature.

- The time is too short for such deep differences to be smoothed out. The EU shows readiness to take matters into its own hands. France, Germany and Great Britain, the E3 countries, have shown a well-coordinated performance in Sarajevo.

With unified positions, they have increased pressure on the US. The E3 countries, especially after the summit in Tivat on June 5, will not easily change their positions regarding the fate of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in BiH.

The Atlantic Council reacted yesterday to the State Department report. They recalled an important formulation from this report in which they find a bridge with the demands of the E3 countries: "The US is ready to support where our participation is needed."

The Atlantic Council emphasizes that this sentence "should encourage the engagement of American policy makers in reforming the current illogical constitutional structure of Bosnia, which was created thirty years ago with a strong American hand in Dayton..."

Then, the Atlantic Council warns: "Washington has a special mandate to cooperate with Bosnian leaders to implement positive constitutional reforms - especially from a security perspective to enable Bosnia's membership in NATO."

To tell the truth, the Atlantic Council admits that in many aspects when it comes to the OHR, the Americans are right - emphasizes Đidić.

He believes it makes sense when Americans say that Bosnian political leaders, very deliberately for their own political goals or their own irresponsibility, shift all blame to the High Representative or to Brussels or Washington.

- Political failures in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be separated from the network of organized crime and corruption, the alliance of the political underworld, captured and blocked institutions that are linked to blackmail and extraction of material gain.

The Americans, however, are most right when they say that this organized crime is no longer on its own, not separate from foreign influence and role. So, there are formal grounds for the E3 countries and the US to find consensus on these positions of the Atlantic Council, if there is political will.

However, if they remain on their positions, BiH could be collateral damage of this new geopolitical competition with unforeseeable consequences.

It is especially dangerous before the elections but also in a time of increasingly pronounced tensions in the country and the loss of America's strategic authority to leave BiH without the OHR. If a solution is not found, there is a danger that BiH will increasingly fall under Russian influence. This is a big test for the Euro-Atlantic alliance in BiH - concludes Đidić.