US reimposes influence in volatile Balkans – Yahoo! News

  

US reimposes influence in volatile Balkans – Yahoo! News

BELGRADE (AFP) –
US Vice President Joe Biden voiced support for the Balkans' integration into the EU and NATO after wrapping up a landmark tour on Friday that marks renewed US interest in the volatile region.

Biden spent three days in the Balkans to show the four-month-old Obama administration's engagement in a region still wracked by the tensions that sparked Yugoslavia's bloody break-up almost two decades ago.

Reflecting on his tour of Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, Biden said “things are drastically better” but hard work remained to be done on the region's integration into the European Union and NATO military alliance.

“What we are talking now is real integration not just the elimination of carnage and brutality. This really gets hard but it is gonna take some time,” he told reporters in Kosovo before flying to Lebanon.

The US vice president singled out Bosnia, saying: “I don?t think the people, I don?t think the Bosnian Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks (Muslims) have any stomach for the carnage again.”

Biden sharply rebuked Bosnian politicians on Tuesday, warning they faced a stark choice between joining the EU and NATO or a return to war over nationalist rhetoric.

The wars in Bosnia (1992-1995) and Kosovo (1998-1999) were only brought to an end after US-led military intervention under former president Bill Clinton, but the region was somewhat neglected under his successor George W. Bush.

Reasserting US policy in the region, Biden said Bosnia does not need a new peace deal as the Dayton peace accords that ended its conflict were “the only guarantee of continuation of non-violence.”

“Dayton II is not needed in my view.

“Matter of fact, Dayton II at this moment would be, I believe, just hardening the positions. I think it would play into nationalists' (hands) at this time,” Biden said.

He criticised Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, describing him as “not helpful” and saying there were more moderate alternatives to his leadership.

Dayton split Bosnia into two semi-autonomous entities — the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation — yet left them united by weak central institutions.

Dodik has warned his entity could secede from Bosnia, while his Muslim rival Haris Silajdzic has called for the Serb entity to be abolished. Their spats have been blamed for rising tensions and stalling Western-backed reforms.

On the last two legs of his tour, Biden stressed the US-backed independence of ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo from Serbia was “irreversible” but offered Belgrade a clean slate in ties despite its staunch opposition to the split.

“Through this visit, the new administration of President (Barack) Obama has shown clearly that… stability and development in the Balkans are still in US interests,” said Sonja Liht, who heads a liberal Serbian think-tank.

Another prominent commentator in Belgrade, Ljiljana Smajlovic, said the Obama administration was seeking to use strong US links to the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo to improve its ties with the wider Islamic world.

“The Balkans is an American bridge towards the Islamic world, a spot on the world map they can point to at any moment and say it is proof America is not an enemy of Muslims,” Smajlovic wrote in the weekly NIN.

“Richard Holbrooke is again a very important person in American foreign policy and Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo are important for what he has been trying to do in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Dayton peace accords architect Holbrooke is now the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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