US threatens to reconsider role in Bosnia and Herzegovina amid rift with Europe

The outgoing High Representative, Christian Schmidt, left, at a meeting of the Peace Implementation Council in Sarajevo this week. Photograph: Elvis Barukčić/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The outgoing High Representative, Christian Schmidt, left, at a meeting of the Peace Implementation Council in Sarajevo this week. Photograph: Elvis Barukčić/AFP/Getty Images US threatens to reconsider role in Bosnia and Herzegovina amid rift with Europe US embassy in Sarajevo made threat after European states refused to back its preferred High Representative candidate A deepening US-European rift over the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina has broken open with a dispute over a top administrative post, leading to a US threat to “reconsider” its role in international peacekeeping. The American embassy in Sarajevo issued the threat after European states refused to back the US preferred candidate to become the new High Representative for the international community. At a meeting this week in Sarajevo of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a multinational group tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement – Washington supported an Italian diplomat, Antonio Zanardi Landi, while the UK, France, Germany and most European states backed France’s envoy to the Western Balkans, René Troccaz. The Trump administration also argued for a weakening of the High Representative’s power to enforce the principles of the Dayton, which ended a war that cost 100,000 lives but has done little to heal Bosnia’s ethnic divide. Why $1bn in Balkans energy contracts are going to an obscure company connected to Donald Trump Read more In a post on X, the US embassy in Sarajevo wrote: “The United States takes note of the European failure to reach consensus around a European candidate and is disappointed these divisions prevented the PIC from fulfilling its task to elect a new High Representative. European indecisiveness, and the PIC’s abdication of its own duty toward [Bosnia and Herzegovina], is forcing the United States to reconsider our role in the current international presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” The US no longer has a substantial military presence in Bosnia, where there is a small EU peacekeeping force, but it has continued to play an influential role through the PIC and bilateral relations. The PIC is due to try again to achieve consensus on the High Representative role towards the end of the month, when compromise candidates may have emerged. One European official suggested that the region might benefit if the US reduced its role, amid growing suspicions over the Trump administration’s motives. Last year, it dropped sanctions on Milorad Dodik, the Moscow-backed Serb secession leader, after a reportedly multimillion dollar lobbying campaign in Washington. The US also put pressure on the outgoing High Representative, Christian Schmidt, to resign after he imposed punitive measures on Dodik for undermining the Dayton agreement. At the sam