Fifteen senior NATO officers previously stationed at the international military base in Butmir outside Sarajevo will work in Sarajevo and be in contact with Defence Ministry and military officials to help them achieve the organisational and technical criteria of Western armies.
"Our goal is full NATO membership," Bosnian Defence Minister Nikola Radovanovic said at a ceremony in Sarajevo on Wednesday, stressing that Bosnia-Herzegovina had already met all technical conditions for admission to NATO's Partnership for Peace programme.
Presidents of NATO member-countries decided at the 2004 summit in Istanbul that Bosnia should be kept outside Partnership for Peace as long as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, are at large.
Recalling this fact, the commander of the NATO headquarters in Bosnia-Herzegovina, General Steven Schook of the United States said that NATO structures in Bosnia would help the local authorities not only in implementing reforms but also in bringing to justice persons wanted by the Hague tribunal.
According to previous announcements, Bosnia-Herzegovina should establish a single defence ministry by year's end, while the two existing entity defence ministries are expected to be abolished.
General Schook has warned on several occasions that NATO membership also requires the establishment of a single army which Bosnia still does not have.