Inzko, the EU special representative in Bosnia, a connoisseur…

(B2) Finally the 27 agreed on a name to replace Miroslav Lajcak as Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (and High Representative of the International Community, OHR). This is the Austrian Valentin Inzko, the current ambassador to Slovenia and former ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina. He won't have it easy, at least according to what his predecessor says (read "the failure of the international community"). But he has the advantage of knowing the culture and history of this area personally.
(And Austria is, in a way, the former guardian power of the region).

The Balkan, Inzko know well. Valentin Inzko was practically born and held a number of positions first in Yugoslavia, then in its republics which had become independent. Born in May 1949 in Klagenfurt, in this Austrian region close to Yugoslavia, of Slovenian origin himself, he attended high school for Slovenes in Klagenfurt and continued in the direction of Slavic studies at the University of Graz, where he studied law, as well as Serbo-Croatian and Russian. Doctor of law, in 1972, he also graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. From 1974 to 1978, he was head of the UNDP representation (united nations development program) in Oulan-Bator (Mongolia) then in Colombo (Sri Lanka). He then entered, in 1981, the Austrian foreign affairs administration in the "Central Europe, South-East and Central Asia" section - where he returned between 1995 and 2005 as director of the service. From 1982 to 1986, he was at the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade, as press attaché and cultural attaché. He then spent three years in New York at the United Nations. In 1989-1990, he returned to Vienna as director of the Press - Information section. And then left as head of the OSCE mission to Sandjak in Novi-Pazar, from October to December 1992 (NB: region located between Bosnia and Serbia which had declared its "autonomy" in the summer of 1990). He was then cultural adviser to the embassy in Prague until 1996. Then returned to the Balkans, to Sarajevo, where he was ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina until 1999. Since January 2005, he has been ambassador to Slovenia.