 |
Holbrooke Says Serbia to Blame for Failure to Implement Dayton
‘The secretary of state and the president think it would be useful at this point for me to go out and... make clear that there is serious non-compliance on the part of at least one of the parties.’
"I think it's very clear we're at a critical moment in the negotiations," Holbrooke told reporters as he arrived at the State Department for lunch with Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Holbrooke, chief negotiator of the Dayton peace accords, left the government last February to become a Wall Street investment banker. He was to leave Washington later Monday for the Balkans. He has been pressed back into temporary service at a time when the western powers' inability to force Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic from power is increasingly undermining the Bosnia peace deal ahead of crucial elections set for Bosnia in September.
Holbrooke's new mission also reflects increasing fear in the administration that the peace deal could collapse and cause serious problems for President Clinton ahead of the November U.S. election. "The secretary of state and the president think it would be useful at this point for me to go out and review the bidding and particularly to make clear that there is serious non-compliance on the part of at least one of the parties," Holbrooke said.
He did not mention Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic directly but U.S. and allied officials in recent weeks have focused on Milosevic's failure to carry out a commitment in the peace agreement to ensure that Karadzic and Mladic are removed from power.
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns earlier told Reuterss that Holbrooke would press Milosevic on the need to remove Karadzic and Mladic, who have been indicted on war crimes charges by the international war crimes tribunal at the Hague. Asked how he might persuade Milosevic to act when others have failed to do so, Holbrooke was uncharacteristically reticent. "Confidential negotiations are only going to work if there is some degree of confidentiality," he said. "Our goal is full compliance with the Dayton agreements. I'm not going to go into the details," he added.
Holbrooke wa to have a working lunch with Christopher and then hold talks with an interagency group of U.S. officials. Burns said Holbrooke would be carrying a strong message "that non-compliance with Dayton by any party is unacceptable."
On his trip to the Balkans, Holbrooke is slated to meet the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, commander of NATO's peace Implementation Force (IFOR), Admiral Leighton Smith, chief civilian mediator Carl Bildt, and other key figures. The decision to send Holbrooke was reached at a White House meeting of Clinton's senior national security advisers Friday.
The war crimes tribunal last Thursday issued arrest warrants for Karadzic and Mladic. The action came exactly a year after Serb forces captured Srebrenica, leading to Europe's worst war atrocity since 1945 -- the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from the U.N. "safe area" in the former Yugoslav republic. France has called for the U.N. Security Council to also issue arrest warrants for the Bosnian Serb leaders. Holbrooke said he did not have any details about the proposal and declined to give his opinion.
|
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke on Monday accused Serbia of "serious non-compliance" with the Bosnia peace accords as he prepared to make a final bid to get Belgrade to remove two indicted war criminals.
Berserkistan, July 14 · OSCE Delays Start of Bosnian Elections
Berserkistan, July 14 · Election Delay: Where the Players Stand
Berserkistan is the world news service of
Pacific Interactive Media Corp.
EMail Berserkistan
©1995-1996, All Rights Reserved