(19 May 2009)
US vice president Joe Biden touched down in Sarajevo in the early hours of Tuesday morning for the start of his Balkan tour.
Biden was welcomed by Bosnian Foreign Minister Sven Alkalaj and US Ambassador Charles English.
He is scheduled to meet Bosnia's tri-presidency later on Tuesday as well as address the parliament.
From Sarajevo, the Vide President will also tour to Serbia and Kosovo in a visit aimed at demonstrating an intensified US engagement in the region.
For years Bosnia has been blocked on its path toward European Union (EU) membership mostly by quarrels, between Bosnia's Christian Orthodox Serbs and the country's Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, over how to enter the EU, whether as a unified country or as ethnically divided as it currently is.
Since the end of the 1992-95 war, Bosnia has been divided in two mini-states, one for the Serbs, the other shared by Bosniaks and Croats.
While the Bosniaks and Croats are pushing for unification, the Serbs want to keep their autonomy.
The US brokered a peace agreement in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, that preserved the country's international borders but divided it in the two ministates, which are linked into a state by common institutions.
The agreement proved to be good enough to stop the war but not to ensure a functioning country.
Former Bosnian Serb soldiers said they will protest the Vice President's on Tuesday and demand the United States stays out of Bosnian affairs.
The protests will be held in the Serb region of Bosnia, which Biden will not visit during his tour of the Balkan region.
However Biden will meet with their leader Milorad Dodik, who says he believes Bosnia can enter the European Union only as a loose federation of two or three ethnic-based ministates, but under no circumstances as a unified country.
He will also meet Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniak leader who pushes for the ethnic division of the country to be completely erased.
Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for constitutional reform in Bosnia and the appointment of a special US envoy to the Balkans.
The envoy would be instructed to work with the EU on facilitating reforms at all levels of Bosnia's government and society.
Fearing this means the US will push changes that would give the state more authority than the regions, the Bosnian Serbs are opposed to any US involvement or the appointment of an envoy.

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