Nobody Wants to Lead New International Initiative for BiH!

The United States (US) is ready to launch a new international initiative for Bosnia and Herzegovina in key partnership with Germany, but the biggest problem is that nobody personally wants to be the bearer of this diplomatic initiative, the BiH news agency Patria (NAP) has learned from reliable sources.

Namely, given the failure of all previous post-Dayton initiatives, there is still no diplomat in the US State Department who would take on this difficult task and negotiations with BiH political leaders.

An additional problem is that such negotiations would certainly have to have a regional format, and the leader of the new US approach must be a diplomat and politician of a higher rank.

- The question is how many more chances there will be to do something in BiH, and we can no longer afford failure, first for the citizens of BiH, but also for the reputation and image of US foreign policy, which has always considered Bosnia and Herzegovina one of its greatest successes - a well-informed diplomat from Washington told us.

As we learn, the US administration is considering candidates, given that US Secretary of State John Kerry has many more important tasks, and they are looking for a person similar to the profile of the late Richard Holbrooke, who led the Dayton negotiations.

The fact that this is a very hot seat and a difficult task is best illustrated by the example of James Steinberg, former Deputy Secretary of State. Together with European representatives Carl Bildt and Olli Rehn, then Swedish Foreign Minister and Enlargement Commissioner, he led the Butmir Initiative. However, it failed, and Steinberg soon disappeared from the political scene.

- Steinberg, although very influential and close to Obama, is no longer in the administration. He works as the dean of a university in Syracuse. No one can say for sure that his career ended because of Bosnia, but that is not ruled out either, because failure is never a good item on a resume - say sources from Washington. The recent withdrawal of Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle is also not encouraging for any new leader of an international initiative. 

As we unofficially learn, the first talks between Washington and Berlin regarding the new initiative have already begun at a principled level, and the primary issue is the leader of the initiative and the platform for discussions.