The old Muslim quarter of Sarajevo contains hundreds of little shops selling copperware and leather goods. The owners sit behind the counters looking out into the narrow, paved streets, sometimes chatting with a visiting friend. There are almost no customers.
The cafes in the quarter are not empty, however. They contain groups of young men in military uniform, Italian, French, American, Irish. These are some of the more than 25,000 troops from overseas who have been in Bosnia since the end of the war more than four years ago.
That is just the military presence. There are an estimated 400 civilian international organisations in the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, ranging from the major bodies such as the UN mission, the OSCE and the Council of Europe to small NGOs like Refugee Trust.
Between them they employ about 20,000 foreign nationals, and many more local people. Estimates vary, but one local observer said she guessed that for every foreign national working in an international aid organisation there were seven locals. This aid operation, therefore, is the main engine of what there is of a formal economy.
More than four years after the end of the war many buildings are without windows, and others lie roofless and empty. Little reconstruction is going on. The old parliament building, badly damaged by the bombardment and not repaired, is still in use, but is open to the elements. While the meeting rooms where the minister for foreign affairs at the time, Mr Andrews, spoke to parliamentarians last week were heated, the foyer was not, and journalists and aides shivered in sub-zero temperatures.
Bosnia's economic problems are very evident, but they are only the reflection of the reluctance of the international business community to get involved in a state where continued stability is uncertain.
The de-facto governor of Bosnia is the High Representative, Mr Wolfgang Petritsch, who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Dayton agreement. He has the power to impose laws, if the federal assembly refuses or fails to do so, and to sack officials who obstruct the agreement. Under the Dayton agreement all institutions are ethnically balanced between Bosnians, Serbs and Croats, and legislation must (as in Northern Ireland) be agreed by a broad consensus. While this means the representatives of the different ethnic groups are not engaged in open conflict, it also means, in the absence of a true consensus on the future of the country, that real progress is endlessly blocked.
It also means that those political parties which try to be multi-ethnic, such as the Bosnian SDP, are marginalised from the political process. It is critical of the electoral law at present under discussion because, it claims, it solidifies ethnic divisions.
But tensions remain at every level of society. Probably the most contentious issue is property. Returning refugees try to have their property, and especially their homes, restored to them, but those who have occupied them do not want to leave.
All these problems mean that Bosnia-Herzegovina is far from meeting the criteria for joining the Council of Europe. Yet the political leaders, the Bosnians in particular, are desperate to do so. They feel that the support of the Council of Europe would hasten the normalisation of the country, and help consolidate this fragile state.
Mr Haris Silajdzic was prime minister of Bosnia during the war, and is one of the co-chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the federation. After meeting Mr Andrews last week, he told Irish journalists that it was true they were a long way from meeting the Council of Europe criteria for membership. But this was not a normal society, he said.
"There are still 1.5 million people out of their homes as a result of intimidation. Our accession would allow us to do the job. It would also send a message to our enemies, I'm talking about the regime in Belgrade, that they have not destroyed a multi-ethnic and multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina."
This is seen as the nub of the problem. Bosnia, however fragile, is a multi-ethnic state, and is attempting to put institutions in place reflecting that fact. If it fails as an entity all inhabitants of the region are looking into the abyss of continued population movements to allow the creation of a mosaic of ethnically pure states.
The Council of Europe delegation got a glimpse of what this might mean in Kosovo. Before the war there were 40,000 Serbs in the capital, Pristina. Now there are only 300, almost all old people, who are afraid to leave their houses.
Neighbouring Macedonia is struggling to maintain multi-ethnic institutions and has managed to stay out of the conflicts which have ravaged the region, despite being engulfed in a flood of Albanian Kosovar refugees when the Serbs invaded. It has an Albanian minority of over 20 per cent, who have seven of the 27 seats in government and have their own programmes on state television, as have the Roma people.
But Macedonians fear that the consolidation of Kosovo as an Albanian state would fuel secessionist sentiment among their Albanian minority, threatening their tiny state.
So, much depends on the outcome for Bosnia as a multi-ethnic state, which in turns depends on what becomes of the regime in Belgrade.
Mr Andrews heard conflicting views on Bosnian accession to the Council of Europe from the representatives of different international organisations. Some felt that accession would help those trying to establish human rights in the state, and plot a path for eventually joining the EU. Others felt that this would send a message that delay in implementing the Dayton agreement was being rewarded.
Given the problems in Bosnia this decision cannot be long delayed. The young men in military uniforms will not be frequenting the coffee bars and patronising the small shops for ever.