The United States (US) Embassy to Bosnia strongly reacted to the statements made by the country’s Defence Minister Zukan Helez in an interview with Fedetalna TV (FTV). Helez spoke about the stalling of Bosnia’s path to NATO and the Reform Plan, which the US Ambassador mentioned in his blog where he criticized the authorities and the opposition for the stalling, stating that t was written by a man from the NATO headquarters in Sarajevo, who, according to Helez, is a local man.

“I think it’s a tendentious, malicious report and I claim this responsibly because they all know who that man is. Zukan Helez is doing everything, and all my colleagues know that BiH needs to become a NATO member. That's why I suffer terrible pressure from the smaller BiH entity (Republika Srpska – RS), but that report is, indeed, malicious. I could see from a few sentences that it was done purely maliciously. He (US Ambassador) wrote it and said that it was our fault that 30 million Bosnian marks (some €15 million) were not spent, which was returned to the BiH treasury. However, the people working in public procurement, representatives from the RS, quite simply blocked us (the Defence Ministry) and that’s why the money was returned to the treasury. It is divided between the entities,” Helez told FTV.

The previous authorities are also to blame for “making this process more difficult” because they changed the name of the Commission for NATO Integration to the Commission for NATO Cooperation, which, according to him, is where the problems started.

The United States was disappointed by his comments during the September 17 interview with FTV, who added that judging from his remarks, the Minister seems to have misunderstood the Ambassador’s blog on BiH, NATO, and the defence reform.

“The United States strongly supports BiH’s NATO aspirations. We are proud of our work with the Armed Forces of BiH (AFBiH), which as the Ambassador stressed, consists of patriotic men and women of all ethnicities who have volunteered to serve their country. As the Ambassador’s blog underscored, these men and women have been poorly served by their civilian political leadership in recent years because that leadership has chosen to focus its time and energy on aspirational pronouncements about its support for BiH’s NATO membership rather than on doing the hard work required to strengthen BiH’s partnership with NATO and to move the country closer to membership. The Ambassador was clear that the obstruction of this year’s Reform Program by SNSD ministers is inappropriate, especially given the legal obligations all ministers and deputy ministers are under to “conduct required activities within their respective constitutional and legal competencies, with the aim of the accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to NATO.” The failure of these individuals to do their jobs consistent with the law is a matter best handled by BiH’s rule of law institutions.

The problem for BiH is not the status of the 2023 or 2024 Reform Program or the name of the committee responsible for drafting it. The problem is the failure to implement reforms. BiH has approved more than one Reform Program, yet there has been almost no progress with implementation. As the Ambassador’s blog noted, there are many defense reforms languishing, such as those outlined in the 2016 Defense Review, whose implementation is not contingent on approval of the annual Reform Program. These reforms are languishing because the Ministry’s leadership has failed to roll up its sleeves and get down to the hard work associated with implementation. The Ambassador highlighted several of these in his blog, including reforms associated with the procurement process, human resource management, and the selling of excess ammunition and weapons as well as the destruction of unstable ammunition and weapons. There are many more.

Minister Helez chose yesterday to respond to the Ambassador’s blog by, among other things, attacking members of the NATO Headquarters Sarajevo staff and accusing them of misleading the Ambassador and the United States. That is false. The Ambassador wrote the blog, period. NATO HQ Sarajevo is not the problem; they are and have been part of the solution. Minister Helez’s crude attempt to deflect blame for his own leadership failings on to them was a horrible betrayal of NATO’s friendship with BiH.”