The event also provides an opportunity for Bosnian delegates to hold a conference on the historic Dayton agreement, along with sideline discussions with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and defence and World Bank officials.
The Dayton peace accords, brokered by the US at a military base in Ohio on November 21, 1995, laid the foundation for a divided Bosnia-Herzegovina to be salvaged from the bloodied remains of the former Yugoslav republic.
An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the brutal fighting that erupted in 1992.
Dayton’s legacy
The country’s system since the end of the Balkan conflict has been split between the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbians Republika Srpska.
Each with their own governments and parliaments held together by weak central institutions.
But the arrangement has been heavily criticised as clumsy and expensive, and many have urged that a new structure be set in place.
“Dayton did not satisfy anybody,” the Sarajevo Oslobodjenje newspaper stated in its editorial.
“Bosnia remains a laboratory for social experiments.”
Paddy Ashdown, the international community’s high representative in Bosnia, last week joined the chorus of voices calling for change.
“We must now look to provide a new framework for the next phase which is not the peace, but transition… Dayton cannot be our ceiling; it has to be our floor,” Mr Ashdown told the Agence France Presse (AFP) news service.
“The framework for the future, I think, will be Brussels,” he added, pre-empting the European Union’s announcement that it has approved the opening of talks with Bosnia-Herzegovina on joining the EU.
EU to begin membership talks
“The opening of negotiations marks an historic moment in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s development, as the first important step towards its establishment of contractual relations with the EU,” a union ministerial statement read.
The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn will oversee the official start of talks on November 25.
A recent five-year commitment to introduce central, state-level budgets for the police forces, and the power to patrol across borders, is seen as a key reform that paved the way for dialogue with the EU to begin.
“The reforms in the country must continue, to further improve citizen rights and economic opportunities of the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They also help to meet the conditions of approaching the EU,” Mr Rehn said.
However, a potential sticking point remains the country’s cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in bringing to justice two key war crimes indictees – Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic.
But progress towards greater unification and EU membership may also be hampered by Serbian reluctance to dissolve the Republika Srpska.
In contrast to most Muslims and Croats who hope the divided government will be abolished, many Serbs consider their separate republic as the main legacy of the Dayton agreement.