Bosnia: Route set for new Sarajevo-Belgrade highway

By Talha Ozturk</p> <p>BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) – Officials of Bosnia Herzegovina on Tuesday finally agreed on a route for a highway linking Sarajevo to Belgrade, Serbia's capital.</p> <p>Milorad Dodik, chairman of the Bosnia Herzegovina Presidency, announced the final deal after meeting with the relevant ministers.</p> <p>&quot;We agreed that a single section to be officially submitted will be drawn on the map in the next seven days,&quot; Dodik told a press conference after the meeting.</p> <p>Dodik said the entire project will cost nearly $3.41 billion, and Turkey is ready to provide the necessary funds, seeing it as a project for peace.</p> <p>&quot;I can say that the route will go from Raca via Bijeljina, then across Brcko and Loncar, down to Sarajevo, through Tuzla and Zepce, next to Pale, Rogatic and Visegrad, where a connection is made for Gorazde. We will connect to Serbia at Vardiste near Visegrad,” he explained.</p> <p>In December 2018 Turkey’s Tasyapi signed a contract with the Serbian government for the highway.</p> <p>Turkey sees the highway's role as a guarantor for peace in the region.</p> <p>The project was brought up more than two years ago, but it hit a snag over its route, with 16 different paths proposed.</p> <p>While Serbia wanted the road to run through eastern Bosnia, the Bosnian side wanted it to run through northeast Bosnia.</p> <p>However, the dispute over the routes ended following a meeting in Turkey between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and former Bosniak Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegovic.</p> <p>With Erdogan’s support, the proposals of both sides were accepted, through building the highway via two different routes.</p> <p>