Another objective is brining Croatia, Albania and Macedonia into NATO in 2008 or 2009, Burns, who is in charge of political affairs, told the Atlantic Council in Washington on February 21. His speech was released on Thursday.
Burns said the Balkans was the only part of the old continent that had still not experienced the benefits of the vision of a united, stable and peaceful Europe.
He said the United States supported the UN special envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, and that a very energetic debate on the status of the province would be held later this month.
Burns announced that the US and the EU would try to silence the forces of irredentism and violence which he said were part of the political structure in the Balkans.
There are still some Serbs who believe that Serbs should unite, Serbs in Serbia, Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and such irredentist forces, which were so destructive 10-15 years ago as Yugoslavia broke up, cannot be allowed to return and be a political force in the Balkans, said Burns.
He went on to say that the Dayton peace agreements had been a unique creative instrument to stop the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the autumn of 1995, but that 12 years later they could not be the way in which the people in the country would be organised in the next 10 years.
People in the region have to make efforts to streamline the Dayton agreements and let Bosnia and Herzegovina become a modern state in the constitutional, legal and political sense, said Burns.
Those two goals, together with bringing Croatia, Albania and Macedonia into NATO in 2008 or 2009, are the initiatives that we have to undertake to make the Balkans join the EU and NATO and to finally demolish the institutional and national barriers which have slowed down the progress of the peoples in the Balkans in respect to the peoples of Central Europe, he said.
A future in NATO and the EU will bring the peoples in the Balkans the same advantages that the peoples of East Europe had after the fall of communism 15-16 years ago, and this is an important priority for Europe and an important priority for the US, said Burns.