Word: herzegovina
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...MOST RICHARD HOLBROOKE EXPECTED from his round of shuttle diplomacy last week was a bit of progress on designing a new shape and government for war-ravaged Bosnia and Herzegovina. Instead, when the American special envoy arrived in Belgrade, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic surprised him with a proposal to end the siege of Sarajevo in exchange for cessation of NATO's bombing campaign against Serb military installations...
...disengagement around Sarajevo goes according to plan, the Serb and Bosnian government generals are scheduled to meet this week with U.N. military commanders to discuss extending the cease-fire to all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It might take some doing to persuade the Bosnians to agree to that because of their latest successes on the battlefield. But Bosnian government officials last week began a series of television appearances to urge a move away from fighting to peacemaking...
While the Serbs, Croats and Muslims have all accepted the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in its present borders, they have also approved dividing it in some undefined way into "two entities," one a Bosnian Serb republic and the other the Muslim-Croat federation. According to the statement of principles, the split will be based on the long-standing proposal put forward by the team of international negotiators called the Contact Group: 49% of Bosnia to go to the Serbs and 51% to the existing federation of Bosnian Muslims and Croats...
...overnight. Even if Milosevic is being honest about his new intentions of becoming a peace broker in the war, internal nationalist pressures, especially from the Serbian Orthodox Church, will eventually prevent any softening of his position. And just as Milosevic cannot change overnight, neither can genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia be remedied overnight. The inhuman wounds need time to heal. The solution to the region's problems requires, first and foremost, patience...
...area. It is the only effective international mechanism and should not be traded away at any cost. Instead, sanctions should be given time to work. While keeping and even strengthening the sanctions against Serbia, the international community should help Croatia and the Croat-Muslim entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina refocus their energies and resources on economic development. Clearly the solution for the region is not with Belgrade. It rests in sanctions, assistance and, most of all, patience. MARIO NOBILO Permanent Representative to the United Nations from Croatia New York City...