Turkey lobbies for Bosnia-Herzegovina in NATO 

 SOURCE: b92

 SARAJEVO --

Turkey has started a lobbying campaign so Bosnia-Herzegovina would be included in the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has launched a strong diplomatic initiative in Brussels so Bosnia-Herzegovina would be included in the MAP at the next NATO summit in Chicago, Sarajevo-based daily Dnevni avaz writes. Davutoglu’s Spokesman Selcuk Unal has confirmed that the initiative has officially started in all countries whose representatives took part in the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels. One of the main topics of Davutoglu’s meeting with British Foreign Minister William Hague was Bosnia-Herzegovina’s future in NATO.

 The daily claims that Davutoglu and his Bulgarian counterpart Nikolay Mladenov prepared a joint letter, recommending that Bosnia be included in the MAP. Davutoglu stressed that Bosnia-Herzegovina had made a significant progress regarding conditions for NATO membership, adding that Turkey would “strongly promote” the initiative at the upcoming NATO summit on May 21 in Chicago. The Turkish FM lobbied for Bosnia’s membership in NATO three years ago in Brussels, claiming that the EU was neglecting Bosnia-Herzegovina by not granting its citizens the visa-free regime.

 “We want Bosnia-Herzegovina to feel that the international community is taking care of it. We must not forget that we watched massacres in that country for three years, so we cannot simply turn our backs to it now,” Davutoglu said at the time.