Guests

Your Excellency,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear guests of Sarajevo,

Dear students!

It is my great honor and pleasure to salute you on behalf of City of Sarajevo, its citizens and in my behalf, and to wish a warm welcome to dear guests and all participants of the 4th International Conference "Education for a Culture of Peace".

I would also like to salute the organizer of this eminent meeting, "Sarajevo Tribune", and thank you for inviting me and choosing this very important and actual subject and discussion in which are participating cultural workers and representatives of youth and women organizations from the country and abroad.

The City of Sarajevo is honored to be a host for this important event for the fourth time. This city, which has been through difficult, four-years lasting horror, succeeded to keep something that was always unique: its multiculturalism, multi-nationality, and multi-religiosity. And this is why I believe that your voice from Sarajevo will be heard much more and that you will, being aware of that, give a great contribution in the process of creating a culture of peace.

Dialogue and tolerance are the main methods of reconciliation, understanding and connecting people. The more ethnic communities try to know each other and to make mutual contacts, understanding and respecting their specific characteristics, the more will there be respecting and understanding between nations. Therefore, respecting the other and different is the main postulate based on which we should build our future.

Only in this way the existing differences between European countries and nations will represent richness of living for all of us.

This is especially important for our youth, for which we are obligated to create a society environment and educational system that will make acquiring different skills and necessary knowledge possible, without which they cannot build a culture of peace in every aspect of their lives.

Therefore, I expect this meeting to give an additional impulse to a culture of dialogue and promotion of peace, which are important cohesion factors in connecting political uniqueness of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I would also like to name this Conference the ceremony of peace, considering that it gives us a hope for a better future in these difficult situations. Dear guests and friends, I hope that your words on this meeting will lead to encouraging results, which are important in our trip to make more harmonious relations between people.

Hoping that you will succeed, I salute you one more time and wish you all the best.

Thank you.