Spain’s king Juan Carlos to visit Bosnia

Spain’s King Juan Carlos will on March 29 attend a ceremony in Bosnia, dedicated to Spanish peacekeepers killed there over the past two decades, officials said Friday.

The king will notably take part in the inauguration of the Square of Spain in the southern town of Mostar and meet members of country’s tripartite presidency, Muslim Bakir Izetbegovic, Serb Nebojsa Radmanovic and Croat Zeljko Komsic, it said in a statement.

The downtown square’s reconstruction was funded by the United Nations and Spanish government. Juan Carlos is scheduled to lay a wreath on a monument erected in the memory of 23 Spanish soldiers killed in peackeeping missions in Bosnia since 1992.

The king will also walk along the Old Bridge, a jewel of Ottoman architecture, destroyed during the war and rebuilt in 2004.

Juan Carlos already visited Bosnia on January 5, 1998 to celebrate his 60th birthday with Spanish troops.

UN and NATO peacekeeping missions had been deployed during and after the 1992-1995 interethnic conflict in Bosnia. Some 1,300 peacekeepers of the European Forces (EUFOR) were still in the country.