Bringing Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to justice remains a condition for Bosnia's joining NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, as Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carl del Ponte has said before the UN Security Council, and Banja Luka must make more efforts in that regard, Deputy High Representative in Bosnia Martin Nay said at the final session of the Defence Reform Commission in Bosnia, held in Sarajevo today.
Members of the Commission reached an agreement under which the armies of Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb entity) and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Croat-Muslim entity), as well as the two entities' defence ministries, cease to exist as of 1 January 2006.
A formal decision on the structure of the country's armed forces, consisting of three regiments with some 10,000 active members, should be adopted by next July.
US diplomat Raffi Gregorian, who co-chaired the Commission, said that alongside full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, the authorities in Bosnia must rid the future army of ethnic parallelism and eliminate the practice of using the army to promote religion.
He also stressed that the budget for next year must include the planned 300 million convertible marks (some 150 million euros) for defence needs because a smaller amount would jeopardise the implementation of the agreed reforms.