Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday initialed the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the European Union (EU), the first step for the strife-torn Balkan country towards eventual EU membership.
The agreement was initialed by EU Enlargement Commissioner OlliRehn and Bosnia-Herzegovina's caretaker Premier Nikola Spiric.
"I am glad to be here in Sarajevo today, on such an important day, when Bosnia-Herzegovina is taking a new step towards its European future," Rehn said in a statement.
"I would like to congratulate the people and the leaders of the country for this. Bosnia-Herzegovina has worked hard on achieving this result," Rehn said.
The initialing ceremony was scheduled to be attended by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Portuguese Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Filipe Marques Amado, whose country chairs the European Union during the second half of this year.
However, the two top diplomats were forced to cancel their trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina because the plane they took was unable to land at the Sarajevo airport due to fog.
Rehn said on Monday evening the 27-member bloc would initial the SAA with Bosnia-Herzegovina after the Balkan country's rival ethnic leaders adopted an action plan on police reforms.
The police reforms aim at the eventual integration of the country's two ethnically divided police forces -- a key condition set by Brussels to sign the SAA, the first step to the EU membership.
However, Rehn said a formal signing of the accord would depend on further reforms proving the country's ethnic halves, the Serb Republic and Muslim-Croat federation can work together.
According to the peace agreement that ended three-and-a-half-years of war in 1995, Bosnia-Herzegovina consists of the two semi-independent entities. Each has its own government, parliament and police.
Since 1995, almost all the ethnically divided structures of government have been merged, including the army, in which Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Croats serve together, but not the police forces.
Rehn's decision came after Bosnia's parliament on Friday adopted new voting rules aimed at streamlining its work, opening the way to defuse the worst political crisis in the country since its 1992-1995 war.
The international community's top envoy to Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak said Rehn's decision "puts Bosnia-Herzegovina back on the road to European integration after months of political uncertainty."
Lajcak introduced the new voting rules for the central government and instructed the parliament to change its own by Dec.1, after which he would have imposed them.
The crisis deepened in November following the resignation of Bosnian Premier Nikola Spiric in protest against Lajcak's measures.
Source: Xinhua
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