Obama has made his first speech on climate, via video to US governors…
He had this message for those who will shortly be heading to Poznan:
Let me also say a special word to the delegates from around the world who will gather in Poland next month: your work is vital to the planet. While I won’t be President at the time of your meeting and while the United States has only one President at a time, I’ve asked Members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there. Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change. Now’s the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option, Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high; the consequences too serious.
In the last couple of weeks there has been more attention heaped on little Bosnia than has been the case for years. First, Paddy Ashdown and Richard Hoolbroke argued in The Guardian that the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Immediately afterwards, William Hague travelled to Sarajevo to see things for himself followed by Foreign Secretary David Milliband.
Now the NATO Deputy Secretary-General is touring Bosnia-Herzegovina while the EU’s two foreign policy supremos -– Enlargement Commissioner Oli Rehn and Javier Solana, the foreign policy “czar” — have issued a document that underlines the bloc’s determination to “sort out the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina,“ while double-hatting EU Miroslav Laj?ak as head of the European Commission office too.
Though this renwed attention on Bosnia is welcome, a new report (pdf) by the Democratization Policy Council makes clear more will have to be done to put Bosnia back on the right track.
