Crvenkovski, who arrived from Slovenia, was set to meet Prime Minister Adnan Terzic and members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency on Thursday.

His visit comes nearly a year after the plane carrying his predecessor Boris Trajkovski crashed in Bosnia on February 26, 2004.

Skopje is hoping to join the European Union by the end of the decade while Bosnia is still waiting to start talks on an association agreement seen as the first step towards membership in the bloc.

Crvenkovski, on the second leg of his tour of three former Yugoslav republics, was set to travel to Croatia to attend the inauguration of re-elected President Stipe Mesic on Friday.

The four countries plus Serbia and Montenegro made up the communist Yugoslav federation that fell apart in a series of bloody wars in the 1990s.

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