One sentence, military property and Russian "no": BiH will be without a green light for MAP and NATO

The NATO summit will be held in Warsaw on July 8 and 9. Judging by the conclusions of the recently held PIC session and the criticisms directed at BiH authorities, as well as the statement of the BiH Presidency member Dragan Čović that things have "gotten stuck" on the Defense Review document, specifically on one sentence, it is uncertain whether BiH will receive the activation of the MAP in a month, which is the first step towards joining the Alliance, writes the Patria News Agency.

The PIC member states, which held a session in Sarajevo on June 7 and 8, welcomed the application of BiH for membership in the European Union. Some member states expressed regret that no significant progress has been made since then.

In the paragraph of the communiqué concerning BiH's path to the Alliance and the status of the Membership Action Plan for NATO, Russia expressed a dissenting opinion. They oppose BiH's entry into NATO, and therefore, only the Russian ambassador appended a paragraph to the joint PIC statement because he disagreed with the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina in NATO.

In addition to the Russian "no" to NATO, BiH faces two key steps that the authorities must take for the MAP to be activated in Warsaw. They also received a warning from NATO member states in the PIC.

- NATO member states in the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) Steering Board and Japan noted that limited progress has been made in the process of registering prospective military property as state property of BiH since the last PIC Steering Board meeting.

They expressed full support for all competent authorities in the registration process and called on them to intensify their efforts with the aim of activating NATO's Membership Action Plan in accordance with the formal request of the BiH Presidency from 2009 and the Law on Defense from 2006.

The Steering Board called on the authorities of Republika Srpska to enable the registration of prospective military property located in the territory of Republika Srpska. NATO member states of the PIC Steering Board and Japan sent a strong appeal to the BiH Presidency to reach an agreement on the Defense Review as a framework for strengthening and modernizing the Armed Forces of BiH, according to the adopted communiqué.

In addition to the registration of prospective military property as state property of BiH, the document called the Defense Review was not adopted either. It has been gathering dust in the drawers of the BiH Presidency for five years, and not much has been said about it in public.

The BiH Presidency, although it has not considered this old document at all, has asked the BiH Ministry of Defense to prepare a new one.

The goal of the document is to analyze the state of the defense sector in BiH and, in that context, define the vision and development of the Armed Forces. All of this should ultimately result in a rapid process of Euro-Atlantic integration, along with the registration of military property, and lead to the activation of the MAP.

Republika Srpska fully supports the reduction in the number of BiH Armed Forces soldiers, but there has never been a unified official stance on this issue.

- Now it is certain, it is up to us. Friends have said, please adopt this, and we can move forward. I fear we are outsmarting each other over one sentence. It is a sentence that should determine the number of soldiers in BiH. There are 9,200 today. We just needed to describe it with a complex sentence, and we have been outsmarting each other over that for three months, BiH Presidency member Dragan Čović recently revealed.

The outsmarting over this one sentence, as well as over the registration of prospective military property as state property of BiH, coupled with Russia's obstruction, will already certainly block our country on its path to NATO.

The summit in Warsaw is in a month. It is unlikely that, given the known rigid political stances from which none of the local politicians deviate, and which are key to unblocking the path to the MAP, our country will receive a green light.