SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday urged residents of this deeply divided country to put aside nationalism in favor of unity, seeking to use her own past with President Obama as an example of how former adversaries can move beyond history.
In a visit to Bosnia just a week after national elections failed to bridge this country’s ethnic divide, Mrs. Clinton said the United States supports constitutional reform here, but added that Bosnia cannot move forward unless its Serbs, Muslims and Croats figure out a way to put country ahead of ethnicity.
That, she said, is what she and the president did after competing in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. “I tried to beat him. And he won,” Mrs. Clinton told an ethnically diverse group of students during a town-hall-style meeting in Sarajevo. “And then when he won, he asked me to work for him.”
“I’m often asked how could I go to work for President Obama after I tried to beat him,” Mrs. Clinton added. “And the answer is simple. We both love our country. That has to be the mindset here.”
But in a sign of how deep the tension here is, one student pressed the issue. “You said that you love the same state,” she told Mrs. Clinton. “Unfortunately that is the major problem we have here. Our politicians often prefer other countries more than our state,” an apparent reference to Milorad Dodik, the outspoken nationalist Bosnian Serb leader who is the newly elected president of the Serbian republic that is one part of this country’s unwieldy tri-government.
Mr. Dodik has called Bosnia an “impossible state” and said he wants to secede.
Mrs. Clinton met with leaders of Muslims, Serbs and Croats on Tuesday in her first trip to Bosnia since the primary battle with Mr. Obama, when Bosnia emerged as a campaign issue after Mrs. Clinton spoke about dodging sniper fire during a visit to Tuzla in 1996. Later, after news reports and her traveling companions contradicted her account, Mrs. Clinton said that she had misspoken.
Mrs. Clinton made no mention of the sniper fire dust-up in her meeting with students, but instead spoke of the more uplifting example of her work with Mr. Obama as a sign of how former rivals can transcend their differences.
She urged Bosnia’s Muslims, Serbs and Croats to look at the larger example of Europe, where former warring countries like France and Germany have put aside their differences. “It’s essential in this century,” she said. “We cannot be dragged down by what was done to our grandparents and great-grandparents, or even in this case, our parents.”
But unity is a tough sell here. Fifteen years after the ethnic war in Bosnia ended, ethnic divisions still threaten to rip apart the fragile country. The United States-brokered 1995 Dayton accord, which divided the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two entities — a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic — ended a war in which more than 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims.
But the byzantine political creation that emerged from that accord has magnified ethnic enmities. The country’s economy is struggling, as are its prospects for joining the European Union and NATO. Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday that the United States supports both. She is heading next to Belgrade, and to Pristina, Kosovo — all part of her two-day tour of the Balkans.
That, she said, is what she and the president did after competing in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. “I tried to beat him. And he won,” Mrs. Clinton told an ethnically diverse group of students during a town-hall-style meeting in Sarajevo. “And then when he won, he asked me to work for him.”
“I’m often asked how could I go to work for President Obama after I tried to beat him,” Mrs. Clinton added. “And the answer is simple. We both love our country. That has to be the mindset here.”
But in a sign of how deep the tension here is, one student pressed the issue. “You said that you love the same state,” she told Mrs. Clinton. “Unfortunately that is the major problem we have here. Our politicians often prefer other countries more than our state,” an apparent reference to Milorad Dodik, the outspoken nationalist Bosnian Serb leader who is the newly elected president of the Serbian republic that is one part of this country’s unwieldy tri-government.
Mr. Dodik has called Bosnia an “impossible state” and said he wants to secede.
Mrs. Clinton met with leaders of Muslims, Serbs and Croats on Tuesday in her first trip to Bosnia since the primary battle with Mr. Obama, when Bosnia emerged as a campaign issue after Mrs. Clinton spoke about dodging sniper fire during a visit to Tuzla in 1996. Later, after news reports and her traveling companions contradicted her account, Mrs. Clinton said that she had misspoken.
Mrs. Clinton made no mention of the sniper fire dust-up in her meeting with students, but instead spoke of the more uplifting example of her work with Mr. Obama as a sign of how former rivals can transcend their differences.
She urged Bosnia’s Muslims, Serbs and Croats to look at the larger example of Europe, where former warring countries like France and Germany have put aside their differences. “It’s essential in this century,” she said. “We cannot be dragged down by what was done to our grandparents and great-grandparents, or even in this case, our parents.”
But unity is a tough sell here. Fifteen years after the ethnic war in Bosnia ended, ethnic divisions still threaten to rip apart the fragile country. The United States-brokered 1995 Dayton accord, which divided the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two entities — a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serbian Republic — ended a war in which more than 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims.
But the byzantine political creation that emerged from that accord has magnified ethnic enmities. The country’s economy is struggling, as are its prospects for joining the European Union and NATO. Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday that the United States supports both. She is heading next to Belgrade, and to Pristina, Kosovo — all part of her two-day tour of the Balkans.
ny times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/world/europe/13diplo.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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