Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Peace deal negotiated in Ohio during November 1995 and signed at Paris the following month. Brokered by the USA, it ended the civil war that had lasted in bosnia-herzegovina since 1992. Under the Dayton terms croatia , and the Serb-led core of former yugoslavia , agreed to recognize the continuance of an independent Bosnian state restructured so as to combine two main elements. The first was a decentralized Bosnian-Croat federation (see federalism [1]), and the second a more centralized Serb republic (see serbia ). The state presidency would rotate, however, amongst representatives of all three ethnic groupings. The Dayton Accord also included the deployment, under united nations sponsorship, of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping troops. Not even that international military presence could reassure Bosnians and Serbs of their security in any area where they constituted a minority still vulnerable to so-called ethnic cleansing . Thus, though the agreement helped towards a fragile peace, it failed to prevent vast waves of panic-stricken migration occurring in opposing directions. ... log in or subscribe to read full text