radio free europe
November 21, 2010
By RFE/RL
On November 21, 1995, on a gray and secluded U.S. Air Force base in Ohio, three Balkan leaders would approve a historic deal putting an end to 3 1/2 years of war in Bosnia.
By RFE/RL
On November 21, 1995, on a gray and secluded U.S. Air Force base in Ohio, three Balkan leaders would approve a historic deal putting an end to 3 1/2 years of war in Bosnia.
The deal, known formally as the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was the product of three weeks of intensive diplomatic efforts by U.S., European, and Russian officials.
As Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudman, and Alija Izetbegovic -- the presidents of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina -- put their initials on the deal, hopes were high the Dayton Agreement would end a vicious interethnic war that had left 100,000 dead and spawned the worst atrocities on European soil since World War II.
Officials also saw Dayton as laying the groundwork for Bosnia's longer-term future as a multiethnic but united state.
But Bruce Hitchner, a U.S. university professor and the founder of the Dayton Peace Accords Project, an NGO tasked with promoting the effectiveness of the Dayton agreement, says that early promise has been lost over the years that followed.
"None of the parties in essence have ever really implemented the Dayton agreement," Hitchner says. "One of the great problems we've had is that over the past 15 years, people have taken various interpretations of the Dayton agreement. And the problem that that brings us to is that, in many ways on the 15th anniversary, we're at what we would call a sub-Dayton stage of the process."
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