A decade after a three-year war in Bosnia gave way to an ethnically divided government, all signs pointed yesterday to a constitutional overhaul that could erase divisions and set the stage for the Balkan country's entry into the EU.
The clincher was likely to be applied under the supervision of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was presiding over a lavish luncheon to celebrate the 1995 Dayton Accords, that were engineered by president Bill Clinton's administration and negotiated and signed at Dayton, Ohio.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, then the US spokesman and now the chief negotiator, foresaw late Monday an accord that would replace a three-presidents arrangement with a single president and potentially point the way to a strong prime minister and a strong parliament.
Burns said the idea is to have political party leaders work out details before elections next year.
Six months ago, while Burns was in the capital Sarajevo, a major step to reform occurred when a single defense ministry was formed out of two armies, two defense ministers and two chiefs of staff.
With leaders of the Bosnian, Serb and Croatian communities all in Washington for the anniversary celebration of the Dayton Accords, Burns said that having come all the way to Washington, he believed they would come together tomorrow on a statement.
"We're not there yet. We don't have an agreement yet," Burns said. "But I'm confident that they're heading in that direction."
Bosnia currently has a weak government. For example, it has 14 education departments. European leaders have warned that the situation must be revised before Bosnia can enter the EU.
In rare tribute by a Bush administration official to its predecessor, Burns praised the accords reached in Dayton, Ohio, "as a seminal moment in American diplomacy."
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS