All Trought about politic at Ukraine

SARAJEVO — In Bosnia and Herzegovina - scene of Europe's bloodiest recent war, and an alternately wild, entrancing, and deeply divided place - the need for sharper, more focused European foreign policy could hardly be clearer.

For starters, there are the Bosnians, riven into two barely functioning administrative entities, a Bosnian Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation. If they have dreams left 14 years after war killed 100,000 people and reduced millions to refugees, those dreams center on Europe.

But, while Sarajevo is a mere hour's flight from Vienna, or Rome, the distance is hard to cover. With little progress on reforms, Bosnians were left out of a recent plan to free up visas for Balkan visitors to the European Union.

Standing outside the Austrian Embassy, Nedeljko Maric, a 42-year-old engineer, pondered the visa he finally secured to travel in Europe. It took two long visits, and a week for his papers to be processed. He feels "a second class citizen," with Bosnian membership of the E.U. "more a dream than a reality."

Whether his plight, and the vacuum of Bosnia's sour politics, eases depends in part on the outcome of the vote Friday in Ireland - another place that knows the bitter cost of sectarian strife.

If the Irish, in their second referendum on the matter, vote for the Lisbon Treaty, the E.U.'s 27 members should be able to enact the accord, which aims in part to streamline the Union's ramshackle foreign policy structures, in turn bolstering it as a global force.

In many ways, Bosnia and Herzegovina ought already to be a showcase success for European "soft power." In the years since the United States brokered the 1995 Dayton accord, the E.U. has largely taken charge here. Its special representative, Valentin Inzko, doubles as the international community's high representative, and has wide powers to overrule feuding local politicians.

Yet analysts fear that nationalist tensions are so strong, and European officials so unable to deliver progress for the hundreds of millions of euros poured in here, that violence could surge anew.

"We are now in a dangerous dynamic," said Paddy Ashdown, former high representative, "and if we fail to operate in a cohesive fashion we could end up with the de facto disintegration of Bosnia- Herzegovina."

In principle, the E.U. has a wealth of tools to shape Bosnia's future: a 2,000-strong military force, a police mission, a special representative, huge investment and leverage on local politicians who aspire to join the bloc.

In practice, Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates Europe's shortcomings.

In Sarajevo, the E.U. has four missions at separate offices. Its officials hold coordination meetings most weekdays with each other, staff from the 20 embassies of individual E.U. nations in Sarajevo, and/or from international bodies.

Few can envy Stefan Feller, head of the E.U.'s police mission, whose job is to improve law enforcement in a country of less than 4 million people with 15 police agencies. As for his own side, Mr. Feller routinely attends three meetings a week liaising with E.U. and international colleagues and reports back to two different bureaucracies in separate buildings in Brussels. Though his mission was set up by one arm of the sprawling European bureaucracy, some of his funding comes from another.

The Lisbon Treaty would combine these foreign policy jobs, something Mr. Feller would welcome. "Power and money go together," he noted drily.

Mr. Ashdown also believes this melding is long overdue. "The reality," he said in a telephone interview, "is that the E.U. institutions, and mechanisms for the execution of foreign policy in their present form, are a disaster."