Dayton Still Plays Part In Peace Process

By R. Bruce Hitchner, for the Dayton Daily News, December 20, 2000

RECENTLY IN DAYTON, IBRAHIM Rugova, leader of the Kosovar Albanians, and Pavel Jevremovic, the chief foreign-policy adviser of the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, sat down at the same table with Richard Holbrooke, President Stjepan Mesic of Croatia, and Wolfgang Petritsch, the high representative of the foreign nations that enforce the Dayton Peace Accords.

The scene was a dinner at the Dayton Art Institute organized by the Dayton Peace Accords Project.

An insignificant event?

It was the first time since the end of the war in Kosovo that Serb and Kosovar Albanian representatives had met. Jevremovic was the highest-ranking Yugoslav official to visit the United States since the accords were signed.
It was also the first meeting between the Croatian president and a senior member of the new Yugoslav government.

It happened in Dayton.

Earlier in the day at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Hope Hotel, a chorus of leaders from both the international community and Bosnia-Herzegovina broke with five years of official international policy in publicly acknowledging that the Dayton accords require some modification to facilitate their implementation.
Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the accords, put it succinctly: "We must not only implement (the accords) fully, we must seek to correct those flaws and defects which have become apparent over time."
The change in policy was announced in Dayton.

At a Nov. 18 press conference attended by the international media, President Mesic of Croatia announced that his country supports a strong central government and a single army in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five years ago his predecessor, Franjo Tudjman, even while signing the Dayton accords, still harbored plans to partition Bosnia between himself and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Mesic chose Dayton, not Zagreb, to announce this change in Croatian policy toward Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kosovar Albanian leaders Rugova and Hashim Thaqi, in separate press conferences at the Hope Hotel on the same afternoon, called for Kosovo's independence and the permanent presence of NATO forces in the region. In 1995, all discussion of Kosovo's status was excluded from the peace negotiations. Five years later, the future of Kosovo had finally become part of the Dayton peace process.

President Milo Djukanovic of Montenegro, recovering from a broken neck caused by an automobile accident, chose to attend the Dayton conference to make a plea for his country's right to determine its own future.

The future of Montenegro was a subject for discussion in Dayton.

Forty-eight hours before the fifth-anniversary conference began last month, the chief prosecutor of the war-crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, decided to fly to Dayton to remind the international community of its responsibility - affirmed in the Dayton accords - to apprehend, indicted war criminals Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
Zlatko Lagumdzija, the head of the multiethnic Social Democratic Party in Bosnia-Herzegovina, told a Sarajevo newspaper upon his return from Dayton that "we must finally realize that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not only not the center of the world, but not the center of the region anymore. The conference demonstrated that if we are not capable of moving forward independently, we could lose any chance for progress."

Croatian Foreign Minister Tonino Picula summed up the significance of the Dayton conference: "Normally for diplomatic events, the various delegations gather at their own embassies and only come together briefly at receptions before the formal meetings. At Dayton, we were able to debate issues openly and candidly with a wide range of leaders, policy-makers, NGOs and then meet with them afterward to carry on discussions."
For the people of the Balkans, Dayton is not only the place where the accords were signed, but where direct U.S. involvement in the region was formalized. Regional leaders know that if they or U.S. leaders speak in Dayton, Europe and the Balkans listen.

The Dayton Peace Accords Project's annual commemoration of the accords has become something more than an observance of this city's improbable contribution to peace in the heart of Europe.

As one U.S. State Department official put it, "It is now part of the peace process itself.'

* R. Bruce Hitchner is chairman of the Dayton Peace Accords Project and director of the University of Dayton's Center for International Programs.