World

Clinton Receives Dayton Peace Prize

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 17, 2000 / 11:55 AM EST / CBS

President Clinton on Friday was awarded the first Dayton Peace Prize for his efforts to end the war in Bosnia and build a lasting peace in the Balkan nation.

"Under President Clinton's leadership, a war in the heart of Europe was brought to an end," said R. Bruce Hitchner, chairman of the Dayton Peace Accords Project and director of the University of Dayton's Center for International Programs.

He was speaking during a news conference at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, site of the three-week Herculean struggle to resolve a conflict in which 250,000 people were killed and two million fled their homes.

Mr. Clinton intervened at key points to bring about the deal, but Richard Holbrooke, now U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was the key player on the scene.

Holbrooke, accepting the prize on Mr. Clinton's behalf on Friday, praised the president's decision to send U.S. troops — to keep the peace in Bosnia.

"To deploy those troops was a very bold political move," Holbrooke told the conference, which again brought together politicians from the Balkan region including Kosovo.

Noting that the administration's initial response to the war in the Balkans was slow, he said Mr. Clinton moved against popular sentiment to dispatch soldiers to the region.

It was a decision that was "extremely politically risky", coming less than a year before the last U.S. presidential election and in the face of opposition from more than 70 percent of the American public, Holbrooke said.

The accords stopped the three-and-a-half-year war and recognized the sovereignty of Bosnia, but divided it into two entities — a Bosnian Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation — each with such powers that they seem to act as independent states instead of two administrative regions.

Haris Silajdzic, the former prime minister of Bosnia, has said that some of the most important points of the agreement have never been implemented, such as the return of refugees to their homes and a revitalization of Bosnia's prewar multiethnic society.

At the conference, he urged improved implementation of the accords.

"I think we could have done better, and I've come here to say that," Silajdzic, who heads a reformist party in Bosnia, said Thursday. "The Dayton accord must be upgraded in order to suit the needs of Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially its economy."

Silajdzic said the new U.S. administration must remain involved in Bosnia. He opposes any withdrawal of the 20,000 NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia.

Some Western diplomats are concerned that the slow pace of change might increase political pressure in the United States to cut back on the peacekeeping mission, as aides to George W. Bush have suggested.

"We always must remember that Bosnia-Herzegovina suffered mainly because there was an arms embargo by the West," Silajdzic said. "So there is some responsibility there."

The award recognzes a person or organization that makes an extraordinary contribution to the peaceful reconstruction of a society torn apart by war. It carries a $25,000 cash prize that is to be donated to a post-war reconstruction program.