’Ten years is long enough’

While I'm still sceptical about how much progress
will actually be made, this is beyond any doubt one
of the most significant developments in the Balkans
in the past decade.

Bosnia to end 10-year divisions

With a prod from the United States, leaders of
Bosnia's three major ethnic factions agreed
yesterday to remake their divided government a
decade after the end of their civil war, Europe's
bloodiest fighting since World War II.


Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heralded the
Balkan accord struck in Washington but warned that
international patience has run out for war crime
suspects who walk free in Bosnia.

"There can be no more excuses and no more
delays," Rice said at a State Department luncheon
celebrating the 10th anniversary of a U.S.-brokered
peace settlement. "Ten years is long enough."

Rice spoke at a luncheon with Bosnian political
leaders and diplomats from the Clinton
administration.

The 1995 agreement signed in Dayton, Ohio, ended
a three-year civil war by allowing Serbs, Croats and
Muslims to preside over separate political spheres.
The result was an inefficient, three-headed
government that Rice said was appropriate for its
day but is now outmoded.

The nation of 4 million people - about the size of Los
Angeles - has 14 different education departments.

"Today, Bosnia-Herzegovina is joining the
international community," Rice said.

Yesterday's agreement commits Bosnian leaders to
revamp the national constitution by March, with an
eye toward joining NATO and the European Union.

European nations have told the Bosnians that they
have little hope of joining the EU, with its trade,
border, economic and political advantages, under
the country's current constitution.

Ivo Miro Jovic, chairman of Bosnia's three-president
arrangement, spoke after Rice at the luncheon.

"This key that opens this door of the future has been
given to us, but only if we know how to use it and
open the door," he said through a translator.

The accord marks the second time in a month that
Rice has applied U.S. pressure to secure
incremental agreements among former enemies.
Last week in Jerusalem, she put the finishing
touches to an Israeli-Palestinian pact that opens the
borders of the Gaza Strip.

The Bosnian war began out of the disintegration of
the former Yugoslavia. The conflict killed 260,000
people and drove 1.8 million from their homes.

The war stunned Europe and the United States,
which were slow to get involved and watched while
an educated, Western-looking nation was shredded
along centuries-old ethnic and religious lines.

"We will never forget the massacre at Srebrenica,"
Rice said yesterday, referring to the slaughter of
nearly 8,000 Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces in July
1995. The killings galvanized international will to end
the war.

"America's position is clear and uncompromising:
Every Balkan country must arrest its indicted war
criminals or it will have no future in NATO," Rice said.

In a separate statement, the Serb entity within
Bosnia said it will cooperate with an international
criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

And all the leaders said they were determined to
deliver all persons indicted for war crimes to the
tribunal in The Hague.

The most notorious of these are former Bosnian
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko
Mladic, accused of masterminding brutal Bosnian
Serb offensives against Muslims.

Rice mentioned the two men by name yesterday.
Both are believed to be living under Serb protection,
moving about the region with relative ease. Karadzic
published a book of poetry last month.

Separately, Rice said the United States wants quick
resolution to the lingering ethnic standoff in
neighboring Kosovo. Legally part of
Serbia-Montenegro, Kosovo has been administered
by the United Nations after a 1999 Serb military
crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanian
separatists.

Although the Bosnian announcement was short on
details, U.S. diplomats said Serbs, Croats and
Muslims had all agreed to junk the three-president
system and make parliamentary and administrative
reforms.

Bosnia has already begun parallel reforms of its
military and police structure.

"These are only the first steps," said a statement by
the Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders. "We recognize
that further reforms of the constitution will be
necessary" to meet criteria for membership in the
EU.

"We are committed to working together to undertake
these reforms and to improve the quality of life for all
citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina."