Yearbook 2007
Bosnia and Herzegovina. In January, Bosnian Legion Nikola Špiric was commissioned to form a coalition government following the All-Bosnian parliamentary elections held in October. Špiric’s predominantly Bosnian Serbian Independent Social Democrats’ party, SNSD, had made strong progress in the election. Parliament approved the new seven-party government in February.
In the same month, the international community decided to extend its direct involvement in the rule of Bosnia and Herzegovina for one year from the end of the year, when the “High Representative’s” mandate would otherwise have expired. The outside world had, through its envoy, supervised the country since the end of the war in 1995. The reason for the extension was that Bosnia and Herzegovina was considered too unstable and the ethnic contradictions overloaded to completely surrender to Bosnian politicians. The risk was also considered great for new outbreaks of violence if Kosovo were to become independent from Serbia. Both from Bosnian Serb and Serbia itself signaled that an independent Kosovo, dominated by ethnic Albanians, would motivate a connection of the Serbian-dominated Bosnian Republic of Serbia to Serbia.
- According to abbreviationfinder: BA is the 2-letter acronym for the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
From 1 July, Slovakian Miroslav Lajcak became the “high representative” of the international community, after the German Christian Schwarz-Schilling.
In October, Lajcak decided to change the voting rules for the government, so that a simple majority would suffice to pass a resolution. Thus, the representatives of the various peoples groups could no longer cripple the decision-making process by boycotting voting. The deadlock prevailed on several issues that were important for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s continued approach to the EU, including the creation of a united, national police force.
According to CountryAAH, Sarajevo is the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many Bosnian serbs saw Lajcak’s rule change as directly aimed at the interests of their own people. In protest of the measure, Prime Minister Špiric filed his resignation on November 1, and other Bosnian rebels in the government threatened to resign as well. The country was in its most difficult political crisis since the end of the war. After a few weeks, however, leaders of all three peoples managed to agree to still accept Lajcak’s reforms. This eliminated an obstacle in the negotiations with the EU on a Stabilization and Association Agreement. In December, Bosnia and Herzegovina received enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn’s initials on the agreement, as the last country among the former Yugoslav republics.
Former Bosnian Serb commander Dragomir Milosevic was sentenced in December to 33 years in prison by the United Nations War Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for terrorizing the people of Sarajevo during the 1990s siege. Earlier in the year, Zdravko Tolimir, number three on the list of wanted from the war who was still on the loose, was arrested. Tolimir, suspect among others. for the massacre in Srebrenica, was handed over to The Hague.
Economic conditions
Agricultural activities, on the whole modest and mainly practiced in the Sava valley, are based on the cultivation of cereals (maize and secondarily wheat), potatoes and fruit trees. The large karst areas of the Dinaric Plateau are instead used for breeding, especially for sheep. Important are the forests, which extend over 40 % of the country’s land area. The resources of the subsoil are far from irrelevant: the production of lignite is good, while the reserves of metal ores (iron, copper and aluminum) are not negligible. There are various industries, especially in the metallurgical, mechanical, food and wood sectors, essentially concentrated in the cities of Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Zenica.
Moreover, all the productive activities, in particular the industrial one, suffered destruction, damage or in any case heavy downsizing during the civil war: the Bosnia and Herzegovina essentially lived, at the end of the millennium, of international economic aid. In the medium term, more than a unitary organization of the country’s economy, there seems to be an orientation of the economic relations of the Croatian-Muslim entity towards Croatia and the Central European countries and of the Serbian entity towards the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Bosnia and Herzegovina weather in March, April and May
Average daily temperatures between 10 ° C and 20 ° C can be expected over the next three months. In Sarajevo, it gets warmest in May, while March is noticeably cooler.
In March, at about 10 days can be expected precipitation in April at about 10 days in May at about 10 days.
In the period from March to May , the sun shines on average between 4 and 6 hours a day. The sunniest weather in Sarajevo is in May, but with less sun you will have to get by in March.