Bosnia's NATO Hopes 'Depend on Serbia'

Bosnia's path to NATO membership is complicated by neighbouring Serbia's unclear attitude towards the alliance, a conference held on March 25 in Sarajevo by the Atlantic Initiative heard.

The head of the Atlantic Initiative, Nerzuk Curak, said that considering the security issues raised by the Ukrainian crisis, the issue of NATO membership has emerged as a key foreign political question.

But Bosnia's membership depends “first of all on whether NATO wants to receive a country in which the process of making decisions is highly questionable and, on the other side, we are limited by Serbia's behaviour”, Curak said.

Curak noted that while Serbia wished to join the European Union as soon as possible, it was far from clear whether it wished to join NATO.

“If Serbia does not decide to join the NATO then the odds for Bosnia and Herzegovina in that sense are lowered,” he said.

“That is because the decision-making process in BiH is that [the two] entities are the key, and the Republika Srpska entity, I believe, will follow whatever the leadership of Serbia decides,” he added.

Jelena Milic, from the Belgrade Center of Euro-Atlantic Studies, noted that Serbia lacked a clear policy on joining NATO.

“Serbia is officially military neutral, and currently in the phase of obtaining an individual membership plan - and that is the maximum that Serbia will do with NATO in the coming period,” she predicted.

“The issue of NATO membership is an issue where we have to bring a political decision, which the citizens make... not just having cooperation through a 'small door' via cooperation with [NATO and] the [Serbian] defence ministry,” Milic added.

She said many people in Serbia remained...

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