Serbia accepts Bosnian Ambassador

Serbia has agreed to accept the appointment of a new ambassador from Bosnia, ending a three-year diplomatic impasse between the two countries, Bosnia’s foreign ministry has announced.

The ministry said in a statement that Belgrade’s approval resulted from a series of trilateral meetings between the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Serbia and Turkey.

It added that Bosnian Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj had been informed of the decision by his Serbian counterpart, Vuk Jeremic, during their meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, in Ankara on Tuesday.

The meeting in Ankara was one in a series of trilateral meetings launched by Turkey in October last year to help the countries of the former Yugoslavia, most notably Bosnia and Serbia, overcome their differences.

Similar meetings are scheduled to be held in Sarajevo in March and in Belgrade in April.

The Bosnian Foreign Ministry said that the country’s new ambassador to Belgrade would be Borisa Arnaut.

Belgrade had previously refused to accept the appointment of Arnaut and another nominee for reasons that were not made public.

Media speculated that Serbia suspected Arnaut, who is himself a Serb, of involvement in awarding Bosnian citizenship to Arab fighters who fought alongside Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) during the country’s 1992-95 war.

The post of Bosnian ambassador in Belgrade had been vacant since 2007.