Serbs wouldn't negotiate until NATO bombardment forced them to.

The Serb side accepted the principles of a revised Contact Group Plan (the basis for the Dayton agreement) well before NATO intervention had started. More importantly, essentially the same peace plan (mostly EU-sponsored) has been on the negotiating table on several previous occasions - even before war had begun - but was undermined by our government, and consequently the Bosnian Muslim leaders, each time. From the beginning, the Muslim side has been holding out for the big (if unrealistic) prize - a unitary Bosnia - and hoping to provoke Western intervention to that end. The U.S. stance toward the conflict has consistently encouraged such behavior and needlessly prolonged the war, with all its consequences.

November, 1995, Dayton, USA
Signing of the peace agreement and
territorial division of Bosnia & Herzegovina

"From the U.S. campaign for Bosnian independence in March 1992 to the Washington- sponsored Croat-Muslim federation in March 1994, American diplomacy has fanned the flames of war."

"For four years, the U.S. and its Western allies say they want peace in Bosnia. The U.S. manages to bring about an important agreement among the warring parties, an essential first step.

Then, to show its good faith, the U.S. deep in the war and directing the military strategy of NATO, chooses to hit harder than ever at one of those three parties.

How can this be happening - getting all sides to agree and then deliberately trying to smash one of them with bombs and missiles?

Are we plain mad? Not really, but in part it is a kind of sickness, the kind that can come with overriding military power. If a superpower does not have to worry about foreign reaction, if its own people pay no attention and if its leader is so insecure that he thinks one way to stay, in office is to bomb a people that have never offended or threatened his own, why, he can just go ahead and bomb, if that is to his taste.

This is also known as the absolute corruption of absolute power. Normally that happens in dictatorships. But if a people living in freedom do not care upon whom their bombs fall, it can happen in their own, democracy.

Bosnian Serbs believe there is a method in the madness. They have agreed, as they should , to an American plan that gives them some hope of freedom from the imposition of Bosnian Muslim rule - their reason for fighting in the first place. But there is an enormous amount still to be agreed on before peace is a reality.

And they fear that the purpose of the bombing is to soften them up so much that the Bosnian Muslims, again helped by Croatia, would launch an offensive that would destroy them before they attained the freedom to choose their political destiny.

In other words, a double-cross. I hate to think that and until I see evidence I will try not to."

"I believe that the U.S. approach to the war in Bosnia is torn by a fundamental contradiction. The United States says that its objective is to end the war through a negotiated settlement, but in reality what it wants is to influence the outcome in favor of the Muslims.The United States, for example, watched approvingly as Muslim offensives began this spring, even though these attacks destroyed a ceasefire Washington has supported."

"Finally, rather than work toward a cease-fire to fend off the looming tragedy, Bosnian government actions were clearly orchestrated to create the conditions for NATO air strikes, not a cessation of hostilities."

"It is undoubtedly the case that the United States and the European Community encouraged the Izetbegovic government to hold the referendum on secession in the first place. It also appears to be true that the United States encouraged Izetbegovic to reject the EC-sponsored cantonuzation plan agreed upon in two separate meetings in late winter 1992. Izetbegovic's repudiation of the second agreement on returning to Sarajevo was the immediate trigger for the war. "

"Few have noted that in 1992, Baker literally created the supposedly independent and supposedly sovereign Bosnia and Hercegovina with its Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, thereby provoking Europe's first protracted war since 1945. He did so with the blessing of President Bush and with considerable input from Larry Eagleburger and Warren Zimmermann - past and contemporary ambassadors to Belgrade. Their design was both complex and devious, but they were so convinced of its efficacy that they supported Izetbegovic in his rejection of the European Community's Lisbon plan for dividing Bosnia and Hercegovina in a federative scheme."

"Having fatally wounded the Vance-Owen plan, the Clintonites went on to undermine its successor, the Stoltenberg- Owen plan, which also flopped as a result. The only constant in the on-going, off-again Clinton approach to the war was continuing support for the Bosnian Muslims. At no time did the United States under Bush or under Clinton contemplate taking an even-handed approach in the three-sided civil war.

As the war wore on, however, the United States gradually succumbed to the long-term strategy of the Bosnian Muslims (which had been in place at least since June 1991) to draft in US/NATO forces on their side."

"[...] by means of its misguided actions and non- actions, the United States has greatly contributed since 1991 to the prolongation of the Yugoslav wars, especially the Bosnian conflict, and thereby to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims, Croats and Serbs, the destruction of scores of cities and hundreds of villages and the uprooting of several million innocent civilians."

"Dayton is the fourth Bosnia peace plan produced since 1992 and the culmination of a glacial process of U.S. acclimation to partition. The first was a prewar scheme agreed to in European Community-sponsored talks at Lisbon (February-March 1992).[...] Tragically, the Lisbon plan failed when Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic changed his mind and scuttled it. Although Warren Zimmermann, the American representative at the talks, now denies it, most reliable reports suggest that Izetbegovic acted with U.S. approval.

Next came the Vance-Owen plan (September 1992-May 1993). It proposed a unitary federal Bosnia divided along ethnic lines into ten semiautonomous cantons that would remain subordinate to a capable central government. The Bosnian Serbs predictably rejected it since it denied them their prime goal, national independence.

Vance-Owen was followed by a European proposal for veiled tripartite partition (July 1993-January 1994). Resembling the Lisbon plan, it envisioned three ethnic republics coexisting in a loose confederation under a powerless central government that could not prevent the inevitable final breakup. Still dreaming of a united Bosnia under their leadership, and again encouraged by the U.S., the Muslims rejected it in early 1994.

At this point the U.S. had torpedoed two peace plans while endorsing none."

"[...] After several rounds of talks our 'principles for future constitutional arrangements for Bosnia and Hercegovina' were agreed by all three parties (Muslim, Serb and Croat) in Sarajevo on March 18th as the basis for future negotiations. These continued, maps and all, until the summer, when the Muslims reneged on the agreement. Had they not done so, the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less loss of (mainly Muslim) life and land. To be fair, President Izetbegovic and his aides were encouraged to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by well-meaning outsiders who thought they knew better."

"The airport, for instance, where many UN soldiers have died, has been closed more often due to direct government fire than Bosnian Serb fire. The periodic ceasefires, likewise, do not conform to the perceived pattern. All, during my time in the city [of Sarajevo], were broken by the government forces."

"Once, in the street outside our barracks, I met one of the government soldiers and asked him rather pointedly why his side was breaking the ceasefires. They had orders, he said. Sarajevo was too quiet: to stay at the centre of the world's attention it needed to be its "normal" self - it needed to be shelled. "

"Many thousands of people would have suffered immeasurably if it was not for the co-operation shown to the UN by the Bosnian Serb authorities."

"Each time a peace agreement could be reached, an "incident" to stop it and slander the Bosnian Serbs was bound to happen."

"David Owen insists that Washington bears considerable responsibility for undermining the Vance-Owen plan and thereby allowing the killing to continue. He is merciless in his criticism of Warren Christopher, Al Gore and the American ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright. [...] "

"The massive use of NATO air power last summer did not hasten a solution in Bosnia because it cowed the Bosnian Serbs. As Lord Owen explains, Richard C. Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, could exploit the tactic as skillfully as he did only because he had persuaded Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian President, that it was no longer in Serbia's interests to back the Bosnian Serbs militarily. After the major NATO powers and Russia proposed splitting the country in half (51 percent for the Croats and Muslims and 49 percent for the Serbs) in the peace plan of July 1994, he also made it plain to the Bosnian leadership that there was no more territory available. This territorial dismemberment, together with the American-brokered creation of a Bosnian-Croat-Muslim federation in March 1994, effectively put an end to a unified Bosnia. Without those other elements, the Balkans would have gone up in a puff of smoke after the NATO action."