Die Beziehungen zwischen Serbien und Bosnien & Herzegowina durch das „Brennglas Kosovo“
The Relations between Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina through the “Burning Glass Kosovo”

Summary/Abstract: On 19 October 2007, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Mirolsav Lajcak, decided to change the role of procedures of the BiH-Council of Ministers. As a reaction hereto Serbia’s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica for the first time openly associated the Kosovo question with the matter of the Republika Srpska. He considered the support of separatist Bosnian Serbs in the case of Kosovo’s independence – heavily opposed by the Croatian and Bosnian members of the BiH-presidency. The article examines the question whether this diplomatic crisis will in the long-term affect the interstate relations between Serbia and BiH which had – following a rapid normalization after 2000 – already been quite well institutionalized. It argues, that verbal confrontation is nothing new in that relationship. What makes it different and a potential danger for the region is the simultaneousness of the internal crisis in BiH and the imminent decision on Kosovo’s status and thus a Serbia occupied and dominated by its nation-preserving policy. Based on the Dayton Peace Agreement BiH is committed to strong entities, weak state-level structures and with those strong relations of its nations to the neighbors and weak state-level foreign policy. The best-case scenario is that the relations stay what they have been so far: abnormal normalized relations.

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