Dayton a "Seminal Moment" in Diplomacy, State's Burns Says
21 November 2005
Under secretary of state speaks on 10th anniversary of Dayton Accords
By Vince Crawley
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- International diplomats are meeting this week in Washington to mark the 10th anniversary of the historic Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian war.
“Dayton marked the great turn from war to peace for the people of the Balkans and a seminal moment in American diplomacy,” Nicholas Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said November 21 at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The under secretary was speaking at a conference entitled “Beyond Dayton: the Balkans and Euro-Atlantic Integration.”
He noted that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to meet November 22 with Bosnia’s three-member presidency to discuss updating the Dayton agreement and to honor the memory of three American diplomats who died in Sarajevo in 1995 while laying the groundwork for the Dayton negotiations.
“We hope [the presidents] will tell Secretary Rice tomorrow they will agree on an ambitious and historic set of constitutional reforms that will make Bosnia and Herzegovina one truly unified state in years to come,” Burns said.
He also said the United States continues to stress the importance of apprehending wartime leaders who have been implicated in war crimes.
The Dayton Peace Accords, which were reached on November 21, 1995, “stopped a savage war that had left 250,000 dead, including the victims of Srebrenica -- the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II,” Burns said.
“Dayton chased from power the despicable war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Dayton succeeded where prior international peacekeeping efforts had failed disastrously,” he said.
“Our efforts at Dayton succeeded because NATO’s demonstration of military power in September and October of 1995 was combined with resourceful and agile and creative American diplomacy,” said Burns, who also was a member of the negotiating team in Dayton. “The Dayton agreement was, simply put, a remarkable diplomatic achievement, authored principally by President Clinton, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and its principal architect and negotiator, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.”
The historic agreement followed 3 1/2 years of war after Bosnia declared independence from Serb-led Yugoslavia in 1992. The ethnic Muslim-dominated Bosniak government in Sarajevo originally fought to preserve the country’s distinctive multiethnic way of life while many Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats sought to maintain ties with neighboring Yugoslavia and Croatia. Many ethnic Serbs and Croats also questioned whether Muslims would guarantee their rights, and some feared an independent Bosniak government would lead to a rise in Islamic fundamentalism.
U.S. and NATO air forces intervened following the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys in July 1995 and a Sarajevo marketplace bombing in August 1995, which killed dozens. U.S. and NATO jets destroyed Serb command posts, allowing Croat and Bosniak ground forces to make important territorial gains.
In October 1995, the three groups agreed to U.S.-sponsored peace talks. Bosnia President Alija Izetbegovic, Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia President Franjo Tudjman traveled to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, outside Dayton, Ohio, and spent weeks in intense negotiations brokered by Holbrooke.
ACCORDS BROUGHT PEACE, NOT UNITY
On November 21, 1995, the three leaders initialed an agreement that granted independence to Bosnia-Herzegovina but divided the country into separate enclaves, with 49 percent of the territory controlled by Bosnian Serbs – who under the terms of Dayton were allowed to call their province Republika Srpska -- and 51 percent controlled by a Bosniak-Croat federation. The status of the multiethnic city of Brcko was left to future arbitration.
Tudjman died in 1999 and Izetbegovic died in 2003. Milosevic is in international custody in The Hague, Netherlands, where he is defending himself against charges of war crimes connected to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Holbrooke, who also spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace conference, said the three Balkan leaders agreed to peace terms about 9:30 a.m. local time on November 21, 1995. He recalled a morning conversation with Izetbegovic. “It is not a just peace,” Izetbegovic said, according to Holbrooke. “But it is peace. Our country needs peace.”
Holbrooke said he also visited Izetbegovic on his deathbed in late 2003 and again asked if the Bosniak leader had regrets about the terms of the Dayton Accords. “I have no question that my country needed peace,” Izetbegovic said, according to Holbrooke, “and the country is beginning to go in the right direction.”
In his address, Burns said it is now time for Bosnia-Herzegovina to update the Dayton Peace Accords and build a stronger, more unified country. (See related article.)
“Simply put, the Dayton accords need to be modernized,” he said. The “internal walls” separating one community from another must be torn down, and Croats Serbs and Muslims “must be allowed to mix, they must be allowed to integrate as differing people do in normal multiethnic states,” Burns said.
He noted that earlier in 2005, the Bosnian government agreed fully to unify its armed forces so there no longer will be two separate militaries and defense ministries. Bosnia-Herzegovina also has sent explosive ordnance teams to Iraq, he said.
CHALLENGES REMAIN FOR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
However, before achieving closer economic ties with the European Union or joining NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, the country must solve two major problems, Burns said.
“First, Bosnia needs to rid itself of the most pernicious and debilitating legacy of the past decade, the fact that war criminals are still at large,” he said.
“All of Bosnia's political leadership has agreed that Karadzic and Mladic must be sent to The Hague and put on trial,” Burns said. If they will not surrender voluntarily, they must be arrested by local authorities, he said, adding that “the Bosnian-Serb leadership from Banja Luka and the Serb government in Belgrade bear a special responsibility to find these criminals and bring them to justice.”
Karadzic and Mladic “are holding back all Bosnians from seeing their country assume its rightful place in Europe and in the wider world,” Burns said.
The U.S. position on war criminals “is uncompromising,” he said. “We will not support Bosnia-Herzegovina or Serbia Montenegro for membership in NATO's Partnership for Peace until this problem is resolved.”
Another challenge for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burns said, is to make the country less ethnically divided. “The leaders and the citizens need to break down the last political and ethnic divisions that have persisted since the end of the war,” he said.
Americans often are viewed as being impatient, Burns noted. “We take that as a positive characteristic because impatience makes us creative,” he said.
“We are impatient to see your country move ahead quickly,” Burns told Bosnian leaders at the conference. “We are impatient to see a Bosnia-Herzegovina where political divisions based on ethnicity have vanished and where its peoples view themselves first and foremost as Bosnians, not as Muslims, not as Serbs, not as Croats. We are impatient to see a Bosnia that is a full member of NATO and the European Union. And we are impatient to see Bosnia and Herzegovina create a dynamic economy, taking full advantage of all the promise in that country. And we are impatient to see your country become a contributor to peace and security in Europe.”
The U.S. Institute of Peace conference was attended by Bosnian leaders, European diplomats and numerous veterans of international missions in the Balkans. The congressionally funded institute promotes conflict resolution and provides on-the-ground teams in conflict zones around the world.
The transcript of Burns’ remarks and the full text of the Dayton Peace Accords are available on the State Department Web site. For information on U.S. policy in the region, see Balkans.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
