Elmedin Konakovic, Bosnia's Foreign Ministers said prior to his official visit to Bulgaria on Tuesday, that the NATO accession as well as stability in the region are the priorities of Bosnia's foreign policy.

In an interview with the Bulgarian BTA news agency, Konakovic stressed that Bosnia and Herzegovina has clear priorities in its foreign policy.

“This applies primarily to joining the European Union, with a focus on NATO integration. Due to the specificity of the Balkans, we have identified the stability of the region as one of the key processes and we hope to make some progress in this area as well,” said Konakovic.

According to him, the main obstacle in the process of integration of BiH into NATO is the political representatives of Serb-majority Republika Srpska entity not supporting the country's membership in the alliance.

BTA reminds that the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina are also connected through institutions at the state level, including the judiciary, the army, security services and the tax administration, but at the same time they have their own governments, parliaments and police forces. The leaders of Republika Srpska believe that BiH should remain militarily neutral and are against the country's membership in the alliance.

“That is exactly the biggest problem. Especially with regard to the speed of the country's accession to NATO. The previous governments decided that BiH should shift from ‘integration into NATO’ to the field of ‘cooperation with NATO’,” Konakovic explained.

He pointed out that at the moment it is difficult to determine the precise deadlines when the country could join NATO and the EU.

Konakovic assessed the political cooperation between Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina as very fair, with open options for deepening that cooperation in the fields of economy, tourism, trade, culture and sports.

He added that Bosnia and Herzegovina could benefit from Bulgaria's experience in joining the EU, because the two countries are geographically close and have a close heritage and similarities related to the past.