Slovakia 's Lajcak takes office as the new High Representative in B&H
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Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak replaced German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling as the new High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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"I would like to assure Dr. Schwarz-Schilling that I will continue all the positive things and activities he started for your country," he said at a takeover ceremony, according to reports from the country's capital Sarajevo.
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Lajcak took up the post at a time when reforms aimed at bringing the country closer to the European Union (EU) and NATO have been stalled due to political deadlock between the the country's two entities - Muslim-Croat Federation and Republic of Srpska.
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After the 1992-1995 war, Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided into the two semi-independent entities, with each having its own state-like institutions, including independent police forces.
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Schwarz-Schilling, who was supposed to be Bosnia's last international administrator, is leaving after only 17-month in office, the shortest term since the post was established under the 1995 Dayton peace agreement to ensure its provisions were implemented until local authority was re-established.
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The international community extended the post of high representative in February, after deciding Bosnia 's state institutions were not ready to take charge. |
The EU has made it clear to Bosnian officials there will be no talks about potential membership unless an effective and at least partially unified police force is established. It also said constitutional changes are needed to simplify the complex arrangement under which the authority of federal institutions overlaps with that of the two entities in the country. |
But Bosnian politicians from the two entities cannot agree on either police or constitutional reform.
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Bosnian Serbs want to keep the entities in place, and are blocking the proposed merger of the country's two police forces, which they fear would lead to the loss of their cherished entity. |
Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats are pushing to combine the police forces, and to draft a new constitution based on citizen rights rather than the rights of ethnic groups. |
"I am pleased to be handing over to (such a) dynamic, able and capable man," said Schwarz-Schilling at the handover ceremony. "This will be a very important time now for Bosnia-Herzegovina. I think that a step by step way is going on and everybody has to decide how big the steps are." |
Lajcak, the sixth high representative, once served as Slovak ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro. He was the EU envoy to Montenegro for the independence process last year. |
