Merkel in Bosnia-Herzegovina
July 9, 2015
Chancellor Merkel visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on Thursday after stopping in Albania and Serbia on her tour of the Balkans.
She was scheduled to meet with the chairman of Bosnia's council of ministers, Denis Zvizdic, and members of the presidency to discuss social and economic reforms. Talks were to include strategies to create jobs and speed up Bosnia's progress toward meeting the criteria for entering the European Union (EU), which it, along with Albania and Serbia, aspires to.
In January, the Muslim, Serb and Croat members of the Bosnian presidency signed a joint declaration expressing their willingness to implement reforms crucial for meeting the criteria for EU membership. Last month, however, the president and prime minister of Bosnia's mainly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, refused to sign off on the plans.
Meanwhile, a convoy carrying the mortal remains of around 136 victims of the Srebrenica massacre has begun its trip from Visoko, near Sarajevo, toward the eastern town, where the remains are to be buried. During her visit to the Bosnian capital, Chancellor Merkel met with members of the "Mothers of Srebrenica," an organization that represents relatives of the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica.
On July 11, 1995, Bosnian-Serb forces overran Srebrenica - a United Nations-designated "safe area" - before killing around 8,000 Muslim men and boys. This was the worst single incident of violence in Europe since World War II and has been ruled a genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Since the cemetery and memorial site outside of Srebrenica opened in 2003, a total of 6,241 identified victims of the massacre have been laid to rest there, while 230 others have been buried in other cemeteries.
mg/pfd (AFP, dpa, AP)