EU foreign ministers agreed on Valentin Inzko current Austrian ambassador to Slovenia, as
the new EU envoy to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Inzko, serving also as ambassador
to Sarajevo from 1996 to 1999, is to replace the outgoing Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, who accepted the position of Slovakia's
foreigh minister at the end of January.
A plenum of ministers have agreed on the name of the new Special Representative of the bloc in Bosnia and
Herzegovina after their "first pick", the former UK's ambassador to the UN and NATO Sir Emyr Parry Jones, has withdrawn his
application.
The British candidate would not have been able to take up the post within the next months due to other
"commitments" from diplomatic sources reported the Brussels local internet based news service EUObserver.
As Reuters had also reported, "the government
of Bosnia's Serb Republic said on Wednesday it would not accept a British diplomat as the Balkan country's new peace envoy."
The story traces back to former British envoy to Bosnia and Herzegovina for the period 2000-2005, diplomat
Paddy Ashdown, who is perceived as biased against Serbs.
"The government is expressing strong opposition to a possibility that a candidate from Britain should be appointed again
to the post of high representative," it said in a statement as quoted by Reuters.
Other candidates were Italian diplomat Renzo
Davidi and current Italian ambassador to Pristina, Michele Giffone, as well as Greece's current ambassador to the United States
Alexandros Malias .
The nominantion of Inzko needs to be approved by the Peace Implementation Council, the
body regrouping all countries engaged in supervising the peace process in Bosnia. At the end of the last year, the EU Member States expressed their will to
enhance involvement of the EU role in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the process of gradual closing of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) planned in
June. However, the termination of the OHR´s mission seems to be endangered by the inadequate progress of the reforms in Bosnia.
The new envoy will be appointed in March.
