Kovačević: Konaković showed ignorance about the NATO path, a step towards membership in the Alliance was taken in the previous term!

(Patria) - The public of Bosnia and Herzegovina must not and cannot get used to the untruths and manipulations of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who uses spin to justify the inaction of the current government, stated Slaven Kovačević, advisor to the Chairman of the BiH Presidency Željko Komšić, in response to the claims of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH Elmedin Konaković.

- Everything that the esteemed Minister of Foreign Affairs says regarding the signing of the first Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO is, simply put, untrue - emphasizes Kovačević.

He stresses that the minister is getting entangled in this sea of untruths.

- His intention to reconstruct history, in a way that only this government is responsible for progress towards NATO membership, will not pass because it is untrue.

Therefore, back in 2021, NATO adopted the plan "One Partner, One Plan", of which the Individual Partnership Action Plan (ITPP) is an integral part, which modifies the way of accession to the NATO alliance, all of which happened before the formation of the current government structure.

This ITPP simply states that it is about cooperation with the NATO alliance, while the Minister of Foreign Affairs constantly assures us that the change of the commission's name from the Commission for NATO Integration to the Commission for NATO Cooperation (which the then Minister of Defense Sifet Podžić opposed) stopped something, and that the current government unblocked it, which is a repeated notorious lie - says Kovačević.

Precisely this ITPP, adds Kovačević, speaks only of cooperation with the NATO alliance, through a series of different activities.

- Let us remind the esteemed minister what the elements of the Trojka said back in 2019 - that they should not insist on submitting the first Reform Program for NATO membership, but that they have other priorities. They confirmed this by canceling the coalition agreement with HDZ and SNSD, which does not contain a single word about membership in the NATO alliance. Perhaps that is their stance for the current mandate period - notes Kovačević.

According to him, what the current government has done is disgrace this country, because they have not regularly submitted Reform Programs for NATO membership, which program activities for the next year or in the future, but instead, unlike that, they have submitted Reform Programs for the previous or last year.

More precisely, Kovačević explains, they submitted the Reform Program for 2023 in 2024, although this should have been done by the end of 2022, so that NATO would know what our country intends to do in the coming year, conduct an evaluation of activities in the third quarter, and provide certain recommendations from which the Reform Program for the next year should have resulted.

- Instead, the current government submitted Reform Programs retroactively for the previous year, in which NATO has nothing to evaluate, review, or comment on, because the year has passed. It doesn't work like that. People in the NATO alliance are laughing at us because of it.

The Reform Program concerns the future, not the past. To make matters worse, all these retroactively submitted Reform Programs are largely copy-paste versions of the first Reform Program, or the current government has offered nothing new that NATO could consider progress, but they are constantly recycling the same thing - emphasizes Kovačević.

He adds that the Minister of Foreign Affairs is silent about this or knows nothing.

- Whoever wishes can check on the NATO website that only Bosnia and Herzegovina participates in the MAP (Membership Action Plan) for membership in the NATO alliance, and this is done by regular, not retroactive, submission of the Reform Program and its implementation.

Does the minister know which chapters or areas are in the MAP, and he should know, because then he would see that Bosnia and Herzegovina, in terms of political criteria, lags far behind what NATO demands of us, and that the current government constantly includes something in these retroactive Reform Programs that is not in line with the political criteria from the MAP, thus pushing us backward.

What the current government has also done relates to the adoption of the Global Fiscal Framework, which limits the budget of Bosnia and Herzegovina to 1.2 billion KM, while the NATO economic criterion is 5% of GDP, which would mean that Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a GDP of around 45 billion KM, should allocate about 2.25 billion KM for defense, or two annual budgets, which is impossible.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs says nothing about this, because perhaps he doesn't know this either or "wisely" remains silent - concludes Slaven Kovačević in his reaction.