Late afternoon sessions: „Bilateral Relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia – Focus on Serbian Foreign Policy towards BiH“
Foreign Policy Initiative BH and Friedrich Ebert Foundation are continuing with the series of late afternoon sessions. The goal of these late afternoon sessions is to open discussions on various aspects of BiH foreign policy and to gather BiH and foreign diplomats, representatives of state institutions, businessmen, journalists as well as representatives of academy and civil society in order to create an all encompassing platform for a quality discourse.
On 10th June 2013, Foreign Policy Initiative BH has held a session entitled „Bilateral Relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia – Focus on Serbian Foreign Policy towards BiH“. Members of BiH Parliamentary Assembly, BiH Ministry of Civil Affairs, BiH Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FBiH Parliament, and representatives of media and academia participated in the session.
In a pleasant atmosphere, Mr. Đorđe Tomić, FPI BH expert and author of the analysis presented at this occasion the mentioned analysis and provided his insight into key processes of bilateral relations between Serbia and BiH, offered his conclusions on the cooperation between these two countries so far and raised new questions pertaining to their future cooperation. Mr. Davor Vuletić, Foreign Policy Advisor in the BiH Presidency and Mr. Amer Kapetanović, Assistant Minister of the BiH Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflected on the role of their respective institutions in the bilateral relations of BiH towards Serbia and evaluation of Serbia’s foreign policy towards BiH.
The general conclusion of this discussion is that the relations between Serbia and BiH surpass the traditional bilateral frameworks. They are based on interests of several different actors. The interest of Serbia is to have strong Republic of Srpska within a stabile BiH. On the other hand, the issue that is being raised is whether Bosnia and Herzegovina can, in its foreign policy, channel its internal diversity and establish a line of common interests which would provide BiH with an efficient and satisfying performance in its bilateral relations with Serbia.
