SARAJEVO, June 5 – The United States warned on Friday that it would reconsider its role in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) after the international body overseeing the Balkan country’s peace process had failed to support its candidate for a new peace envoy.
The Peace Implementation Council (PIC), an informal body overseeing the implementation of the U.S.-brokered Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war in 1995, on Thursday failed to reach a consensus on a successor to Germany’s Christian Schmidt, who suddenly quit last month under what he said was U.S. pressure.
“European indecisiveness, and the PIC’s abdication of its own duty toward BiH, is forcing the United States to reconsider our role in the current international presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
The U.S. is disappointed that the European failure to reach consensus around a European candidate prevented PIC from electing a new High Representative, the statement said.
Schmidt, who resigned in May from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) which monitors the implementation of the peace accords, said after the meeting that the consultations on his successor will continue in the coming days.
The State Department, which had announced that the “U.S.-led nation-building era has passed”, has made clear that it wanted a new envoy with a more limited mandate and that it supported seasoned Italian diplomat Antonio Zanardi Landi for the job.
“The U.S. delegation strove to achieve a consensus around a commonly shared vision and Italy’s well-qualified candidate, the experienced diplomat Ambassador Antonio Zanardi Landi,” the statement said.
According to unconfirmed reports, most European countries supported French diplomat Rene Troccaz as the candidate to succeed Schmidt.
The division between the U.S. and Europe comes at a fragile time for Bosnia, which remains deeply divided along ethnic lines. The country has enjoyed strong backing from Washington, but the U.S. State Department has signalled a shift in policy towards more commercial terms, stressing “mutually beneficial partnerships”, including through energy projects, in a May report on the Western Balkans.
“It really can be seen in light of the United States challenging the EU or asserting itself as an independent vector for the region, rather than having a kind of unified approach as has been the case effectively since Dayton,” a U.S.-based analyst who did not want to be identified told Reuters. REUTERS