I am delighted that you are all able to join us today to celebrate another solid practical achievement on the path to peace.

We are here to mark another great stride towards normality, another significant step towards a modern, strong Bosnia with close links to Europe and to the outside world.

We are here to declare this airport officially open. Banja Luka airport is back to business.

This is the first of the regional airports to open. It will be followed very soon, I hope, by the regional airports at Tuzla and Mostar. Both have been technically inspected and cleared for flight operations.

A great many people have worked a great many hours to make today possible. Perhaps some of you thought at times in recent years that this day would never come. Let me pay tribute to your hard work, and to your determination to see aircraft flying here again.

Let me say thank you as well as to the many governments and organisations which have helped get this airport working.

Thank you in particular to:

• SFOR for controlling the airspace, a function which it will continue to carry out;
• to MND SW for the renovation work which it has undertaken;
• to the British Government, which has spent over US$ 1.6 m here; only yesterday a British aircraft completed the flight checking of the landing system here, enabling many of you to land with, I trust, some confidence today;
• Thanks also to the US Government for all it has done so far, and for its willingness to contribute to long-term funding ideas for the regeneration of airports;
• and to the many other nations which have offered aviation support.

A real team effort: thank you to you all.

I am particularly pleased to see that there is considerable interest in the potential of this airport. The presence of representatives of prominent European airlines is testimony to that.

This airport, like airports anywhere, brings tremendous opportunity.

Airports mean jobs. They bring people, and people bring money and business. They put the towns and regions they serve firmly on the map.

The opening of this airport today puts Banja Luka on that map; it will bring much needed employment to the region, and pour money into the public purse.

There is another reason I am particularly pleased to be here this morning.

We have here, in the field of aviation, an answer to the gloomsters and the doomsters. To those who write Dayton off, who assure us that it will never work, I say: look at this. Here is a joint institution which works. The Department of Civil Aviation has been formed and is developing rapidly. It has its HQ in Sarajevo. Its financial and management plans are being drawn up. Its international secretariat is being established. The three Directors were in Brussels last week and reached agreement with Eurocontrol on overflight charges. The income will start flowing in from the 1st of January 1998. The DCA will be forwarding to the Council of Ministers an Air Service Agreement completed with the British Department of Trade and Industry this week. It is the first to be signed and opens the door to agreements with British airlines. I am sure that similar agreements with other countries will follow very soon.

In short, a story of success and cooperation, working to international standards, regulated by DCA, implemented by the Entities: a classic example of what Dayton is all about.

Let this be the first of many such ceremonies, a measure of what can be achieved when people put politics to one side and get on with the task which people right across this country want to see them engaged in: working round the clock to put communities back on their feet, and to allow them and their families to live normal, prosperous lives in a normal prosperous and peaceful country.

It gives me great pleasure to present the Bosnia and Herzegovina Department of Civil Aviation Certificate, and let me finish by wishing Banja Luka airport and the airport management many years of successful and safe flight operations.

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OHR Speech by the High Representative
18 November 1997