The reintroduction of the function of the US special envoy for the Western Balkans shows that Washington wants to speed up the resolution of some of the most important open issues in the region, Bosnia's Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak said Saturday, on the occasion of Matthew Palmer's appointment to this function.

He said that the main task of Matthew Palmer who was appointed to this function on Friday, will be the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and the issues surrounding Kosovo, but added he will surely be active in other countries including Bosnia.

“Palmer is well acquainted with the situation in this part of Europe, he speaks Serbian language and has strong family ties with the region and I hope he will be successful in his new job,” Crnadak noted.

As a representative of Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity in the Bosnian parliament, he said “Palmer's role will be important for them” because “he respects the RS and Bosnia's Dayton structure as well as the need to resolve all issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina exclusively through compromise.”

The Department of State wrote on Friday that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Palmer as his Special Representative for the Western Balkans to lead the US efforts to strengthen their diplomatic engagement in support of peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and focus on the integration of the Western Balkan countries into Western institutions.