Tonight:
4°c
WORLD: William Hague fears bleak future for Bosnia
Ben Bailey12 Aug 2009
Urgent action is needed to prevent Bosnia being plunged back into turmoil, shadow foreign secretary William Hague warned today.
Mr Hague said the fledgling Balkan state was being "slowly pulled apart" by ethnic tensions and risked becoming "Europe's black hole".
His comments come 14 years after the end of the brutal civil war that tore up the former Yugoslav republic and left around 100,000 dead.
Speaking to The Independent after a two-day visit last month to Srebrenica, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred in 1995, Mr Hague said: "In some form (Bosnia) could break down - this is a country being slowly pulled apart."
While stressing that he was not predicting a return to all-out war, he said that violence was "not far below the surface" as the situation became "grimmer".
He said: "You would think you were going to a place where the people have moved on and communities have got together 14 years later. But actually the atmosphere is grim and it is very difficult for the refugees who lost all their menfolk to move back there - it's a rather unwelcoming atmosphere. Politically, around them, their country is sliding backwards and further apart."
Mr Hague criticised the "weak and confused" EU response to the "pressure to fragment the country" and said: "It is moving slowly in the wrong direction and - despite all the efforts and all the bloodshed and all the sacrifices there - it's moving in the wrong direction without alarm bells sounding in most European capitals."
He continued: "There should be no talk of withdrawing European forces. A strong signal should be sent that Europe will not ignore this situation."
David Cameron's unofficial deputy also warned that a looming crisis in Bosnia would stymie efforts to expand EU membership to Croatia, Serbia and Turkey.
He told the newspaper: "If that doesn't work, there will be a hole in the heart of Europe of discontent, of people trafficking.
"People think the Balkans are what we debated in the 1990s and now we can forget about it. In fact, it's a crucial area in foreign policy in the next five to 10 years and will get a lot of emphasis in the next Conservative administration."
