Solana set for trip to Bosnia with Biden

(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has confirmed that he will visit Bosnia-Hercegovina with US Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday to prepare for the transition of the international high representative post there.

"It's the first time I'm going to Bosnia together with Vice President Biden," Solana said Monday as he arrived for talks with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

"We will meet with everybody. We will make very clear signals to everybody that the position of the US and the EU is the same" about the evolution of the post, he added.

Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, sparked by ethnic tensions surrounding its break from the former Yugoslavia, left at least 100,000 people dead and more than two million homeless.

The Dayton accord that ended the war split Bosnia into two semi-autonomous entities -- the Serbian Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation -- yet left them united by weak central institutions.

The country has remained under international tutelage -- the Office of the High Representative -- due to political instability and the failure of local politicians to pass reforms.

The High Representative post, held since March by Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, is due to disappear and leave the EU Special Representative to Bosnia-Hercegovina as the main international presence.

Inzko at present performs both functions.

The change in post, one of the moves expected if Bosnia is to move towards EU membership, has been approved by the international council applying the 1995 Dayton peace accords under which Bosnia has been supervised following the end of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia.

The post of international High Representative has already been prolonged to the middle of this year since original plans to scrap it in 2007.

It is likely to be extended again until the end of the year.

Biden will be the highest-ranking US official to visit Bosnia since former US president Jimmy Carter did so in 1980.