Selmo Cikotić

Selmo Cikotić is the Minister of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was appointed to his current position in February 2007, but unable to take up officially until 22 April 2007, when a ban on former army officers performing defence-related civilian duties expired. In February 1993 he was made commander of operational group Zapad of the 3rd Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Bugojno. Cikotić served as the military attaché at the embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United States in Washington, D.C. from December 1994 to 1997. As Brigadier General he was enrolled at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in June 1997. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Commander of the 1st Corps of the Federation Army, and from 2004 to 2007 CEO of OKI in Sarajevo. In June 2007 he jointly attended a Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council at the NATO headquarters in Brussels with the Serbian defence minister Dragan Šutanovac. Together they expressed their governments’ wish to join NATO as soon as possible. In March 2008 he led a five-member delegation to Pakistan, to discuss “bilateral cooperation between the two Muslim countries”. Cikotić holds a Master’s degree from the University of Sarajevo since 2004.