Bosnia-Herzegovina's overall parliament has approved a new Council of Ministers led by an ethnic Croat to spearhead the beleaguered Balkan state's freshly reinvigorated EU bid despite ongoing threats to unity.
Twenty-three of the 42 lawmakers from the House of Representatives in attendance backed confirmation of the council with 61-year-old ethnic Croat Borjana Kristo at its head.
Kristo is the first woman to head the council in its nearly three-decade history.
Elections were held on October 2 for posts throughout the ethnically administered country including new four-year terms on the council, the ethnically divided state's main governing body on a national level.
The new Council of Ministers includes members of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZBiH), the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) led by secessionist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, and a coalition of several political parties led by the Bosnian Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Kristo is a deputy leader of the Bosnian HDZBiH.
The leader of the center-right People and Justice party, Elmedin Konakovic, will serve as Bosnia's foreign minister.
Other appointments include State Minister of Finance and Treasury Zoran Tegeltija and the head of the department of foreign trade and economic relations Stasa Kosarac, both from Dodik's SNSD party,
An HDZBiH member, Davor Bunoza, will be justice minister.
Kristo was appointed to head the council by Bosnia's tripartite presidency and confirmed late last month.
The new council does not include members of one of Bosnia's leading Bosniak parties, the Party of Democratic Action, for the first time in decades.
The confirmations come almost a month after a coalition agreement was signed and a cabinet agreed on December 15.
Bosnia is still governed and administered under the 1996 Dayton agreements that ended a bitter three-year war.
It is divided up into a majority Bosniak and Croat federation and a majority Serb entity called Republika Srpska, which has been dominated by the secessionist Dodik for years.
Bosnia was granted candidate status by the European Union in December.