SARAJEVO: Growing cooperation between former Yugoslav republics may prove vital in bridging a wide ethnic divide still hobbling Bosnia 15 years after war, the region’s top international envoy said on Tuesday. “Compared to six months ago, we have now an incredibly good climate for regional cooperation, but, what’s even more, regional reconciliation,” said Valentin Inzko, the international High Representative who has the power to fire Bosnian officials and overturn laws seen as a threat to the peace process. “We are speaking now of a different region, or a different era, and in this regard, as far as regional cooperation and reconciliation is concerned, we have arrived in the 21stcentury.” Inzko, an Austrian diplomat, spoke to Reuters as European Union and Balkan foreign ministers started arriving in Sarajevo before a summit on the region’s future set for Wednesday. Even as all of the emerging Balkan states aspire to join the EU, with many already in or hoping to join Nato too, Bosnia has proved an especially difficult piece of the puzzle, a country which could potentially delay the whole region’s progress. Croatia is well on its way to becoming an EU member and Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia have applied for membership. Yet Bosnia remains an international protectorate under Inzko’s oversight, with animosity between its Serb and Croat-Muslim halves hindering investment and development. Inzko said Muslim Bosniak, Catholic Croatian and Orthodox Serb leaders in Bosnia, where national elections are due in October, will find it harder to appeal to voters along national lines if the region’s countries are getting along better. “The regional situation has relaxed and once the regional situation has relaxed, it is difficult to use nationalist rhetoric,” Inzko said, speaking of local Bosnian politicians. Presidents of four ex-Yugoslav republics met in Sarajevo last weekend and pledged to make a fresh start in their relations and work closely on the path to the EU. The meeting followed steps by Croatian and Serbian reformist leaders to heal the wounds of the 1990s wars that followed the breakup of federal Yugoslavia. Bosnia saw the heaviest fighting with 100,000 dying in 1992-95. The Serbian parliament in March passed a resolution apologising for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which Bosnian Serb forces killed 8,000 Muslims. Bosnia’s presidency chairman Haris Silajdzic, a Muslim, then said he was ready for his maiden post-war visit to Belgrade. Croatian President Ivo Josipovic expressed regret to Bosniafor Zagreb’s wartime role in fuelling ethnic divisions and honoured victims of each community during his Sunday trip to the Serb Republic, the first ever by a Croat president. Inzko said the international presence, including 2,000 EU peacekeepers, in Bosnia would likely diminish dramatically in the next two or three years. “The international community would be very happy if there was more ownership, you know, more feeling or purpose, more sense of urgency in the region,” he said. “We really want these countries to take their own destinies in their own hands.”