Selmo Cikotić

Selmo Cikotić is Dean of the American School of Government, American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  He was the Minister of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from February 2007, but was unable to take up this post officially until 22 April 2007, when a ban on former army officers performing defence-related civilian duties expired. In February 1993, he was appointed commander of the operational group Zapad of the 3^rd Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Bugojno. Mr Cikotić served as a 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 enrolled at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in June 1997. From 2000 to 2004 he was Commander of the 1^st Corps of the Federation Army, and from 2004 to 2007 he was CEO of OKI in Sarajevo. In June 2007 he jointly attended a Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels together with 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 received an MA from the University of Sarajevo in 2004. He defended his PhD theses entitled “Security Prospects of Bosnia and Hercegovina” in July 2008. In May 2009 he was elected Docent for Politics and Strategies of National Security at the Faculty of Political Sciences at Sarajevo University. He has published a number of articles and translated many military field manuals and studies from English to Bosnian. His two books, The USA – BIH, Possible Transfer of Security Solutions and Security Prospectives of Bosnia and Herzegovina were published last year.