Leader: No Time To Party

Bosnia’s pious Muslim president slammed state TV and radio on Tuesday for covering “licentious” New Year’s Eve celebrations in Bosnia’s first peaceful holiday in four years.

In an open letter to RTV Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic said he had “a disagreeable feeling” as he watched TV scenes of revelers in bars and streets in Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns, when “99.9 percent of our citizens” were not in a partying mood.

Most Bosnians marked the New Year “modestly and in a way so as not to hurt the feelings of the thousands of people who have lost their homes and their loved ones,” Izetbegovic wrote.

Izetbegovic wrote the letter as a private citizen, not as president, the state news agency BH Press reported.

TV footage that aired New Year’s Day showed a shirtless man dancing at a crowded Sarajevo party, rows of wine and spirits bottles and people cavorting in the streets.

“We are a European nation but that doesn’t mean that we have to throw open our doors to all European vices such as alcohol, pornography, drugs and licentious, dissolute practices of all kinds,” he wrote.

Apparently, Izetbegovic’s U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey does not fully share those views. Sacirbey bared his torso in a restaurant Dec. 30 while dancing with Irish musician Bono of U2, who was visiting Sarajevo at Sacirbey’s invitation.