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"Bosnia situation worrying; no conflict potential in Kosovo" (Tanjug, B92)

Aleksandar Vucic will travel to Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday "to meet with Muslim leader Bakir Izetbegovic in an effort to defuse recent tensions." The Serbian Prime Minister also announced that he may make a similar trip to Croatia in the coming weeks, the Politico website said on Monday.

“My biggest worry is the situation in Bosnia… everything that is in and around Bosnia. Who knows what spark might ignite Bosnia?," he has been quoted as saying. According to Vucic, "growing political extremism in the Balkans threatens the stability of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the region."

"The stability of the region is something we need to take care of and we need to understand each other more and better," Vucic told the website. The recent verdicts in war crimes trials passed by the Hague Tribunal have left the environment more volatile than it had been in years, Vucic said.

“Since March it has looked from time to time as though we were back in the 1990s. The only important topics here were the Karadzic verdict, the Bosnia-Serbia relationship, the Serbia-Croatia relationship and when we were going to start with real conciliation. It is a kind of time machine,” he said.

Vucic also said he was "less concerned about the situation in Kosovo: “It is not a part of the western Balkans, a part of my country under the Serbian constitution, that worries me the most. I don’t see any possibility for future clashes in Kosovo.”

Vucic's comments come less than two weeks before the Serbian elections and will be seen by some as intended to present him as the "sole voice of reason in the fractious region," the website said, noting that despite his "nationalist past" - as an official of Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party (SRS) - "the Serbian leader has won the trust of Germany’s Angela Merkel and other European leaders who regard him as an anchor of stability in the troubled region."

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