OHR related Interviews

BANJA LUKA – High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, will allow today a majority of dismissed officials, except for the highest ranking persons such as ministers and their assistants and those who were discharged from their offices due to obstruction of cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, to return to public service.

The endorsement of the decision on the start of Stabilization and Association negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is expected to happen today in Brussels, represents a historic day. This is a day for which many of us have been working long and hard. BiH should be proud that it has passed this road in such a short period of time. This is [...]

High Representative Paddy Ashdown confirmed exclusively for “Večernji” that BiH politicians gathered in Washington would be offered to sign a “statement” committing themselves to implementation of constitutional reforms. “Večernji” wrote about this several times, but there was no official confirmation of that.

I believe that the Dayton agreement was an extraordinary agreement. Today BiH is acknowledged as the most successful large-scale peace mission in the world. This is how Paddy Ashdown, the High Representative in BiH, evaluates the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina ten years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.

The nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is preparing to mark another milestone. Next month—the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the civil war in the former Yugoslavia—Britain’s Lord Jeremy "Paddy" Ashdown will step down as the nation’s internationally-appointed high representative. Ashdown, 64, has spent the [...]

- I am convinced that we will implement police reform in accordance with the EU requirements and with determination that police regions should cross the inter-Entity border line in those areas where this is necessary. It is of great importance that the EU and the U.S. are involved in monitoring this process, with a mandate and instruments to ensure [...]

In a few weeks’ time the International Community might decide on who will be the new (and the last) High Representative. Paddy Ashdown should leave our country by February next year and go back to London. His home there is now already being renovated. Although when replying to what he will be doing after the end of his mandate as the High Repres [...]

Police reform in BiH could be accelerated if the financial structure of the state allows for that possibility. In an interview for «Dnevni avaz», the High Representative Paddy Ashdown explains that the deadline for the implementation of police reform has not been accidentally specified as a five-year period. -We had the financial capabilities of th [...]

Following the decision of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska not to accept the measures for the police reform, BiH will be, together with Belarus, the only European country which does not have contractual relations with the European Union, warned High Representative Paddy Ashdown at the beginning of the interview for "Dnevni avaz".

Deadlines are linked to mid-September. If we want to start the EU SAA process around the tenth anniversary of Dayton, then a decision concerning police reform should be made around the middle of September. I sincerely hope that we will be concluding a successful police reform discussion this week.