BOSNIA MADE AN IMPORTANT STEP TOWARDS NATO MEMBERSHIP

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (April 7, 2008) - “Bosnia has made an important step forward towards the full-time membership to NATO”, the Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic stated in Sarajevo upon the return of the Bosnian state delegation from the NATO Summit held in Bucharest,Romania. Leaders of 26 NATO member states called on Bosnia to enter the Intensive Dialogue Phase (ID).

President Silajdzic addressed the press at the Sarajevo International Airport, accompanied by the Bosnian Foreign Affairs Minister Sven Alkalaj and the Bosnian Defence Minister Selmo Cikotic. He stated that NATO has clearly recognized the efforts and results achieved in the Bosnian defence reform.

“I must say that this is the result of a good coordination at the state level, especially between ministries of foreign affairs, defence and security”, President Silajdzic emphasized.

He expressed hope that Bosnia will make the next step,the Membership Action Plan (MAP), soon. Maybe at the following Berlin Summit.

”That is the last step in the association processes”, President Silajdzic said.

The Bosnian Defence Minister Selmo Cikotic made it clear that the Membership Action Plan is “a mechanism which requires fulfilment of all the conditions that are planned by the IPAP document and by the intensive dialogue”.

”We are in the process of realization of most of the obligations proscribed by an Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) and Intensive Dialogue. We are of the opinion that majority of obligations will be fulfilled this year. Of course, now we will start working on the application for the MAP membership”, Minister Cikotic stated.

He mentioned that the “only obstacle to Bosnia’s ID membership was the tempo of NATO's Partnership for Peace Program (PFP) realization”.

”For those reasons, we expect that the monitoring of implementation of the obligations will increase and that we will, in the following few months, have the MAP application”, the Bosnian Defence Minister said.
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