Peace plans offered before and during the Bosnian War

Four major peace plans were offered before and during the Bosnian-Herzegovina War, commonly known as the Bosnian War, by European Community (EC) and United Nations (UN) diplomats before the conflict was settled by the Dayton Agreement in 1995.

Carrington-Cutileiro

The Carrington-Cutileiro peace plan, named for its authors Lord Carrington and Portuguese ambassador Jorge Cutileiro, resulted from the EC Peace Conference held in February 1992 in an attempt to prevent Bosnia-Herzegovina sliding into war. It proposed ethnic power-sharing on all administrative levels and the devolution of central government to local ethnic communities. However, all Bosnia-Herzegovina's districts would be classified as Muslim, Serb or Croat under the plan, even where no ethnic majority was evident.

On March 18, 1992, all three sides signed the agreement; Alija Izetbegović for the Bosniaks, Radovan Karadžić for the Serbs and Mate Boban for the Croats.

On March, 28 1992, however, Izetbegović withdrew his signature and declared his opposition to any type of division of Bosnia, after meeting with then US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann, in Sarajevo.

:" What was said and by whom remains unclear. Zimmerman denies that he told Izetbegovic that if he withdrew his signature, the United States would grant recognition to Bosnia as an independent state. What is indisputable is that Izetbegovic, that same day, withdrew his signature and renounced the agreement.". [cite web
url=http:// inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/Vol2Issue41/Vol2Issue41dkm.html
title= Alija Izetbegovic, 1925-2003
author= Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic
publisher= In the National Interest
accessdate=2008-08-28
last= de Krnjevic-Miskovic
first= Damjan]

Vance-Owen

In early January 1993, the UN Special Envoy Cyrus Vance and EC representative Lord Owen began negotiating a peace proposal with the leaders of Bosnia's warring factions. The proposal, which became known as the "Vance-Owen peace plan", involved the division of Bosnia into ten semi-autonomous regions and received the backing of the UN. On May 5, however, the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb assembly rejected the Vance-Owen plan; and on June 18, Lord Owen declared that the plan was "dead".

Given the pace at which territorial division, fragmentation and ethnic cleansing had occurred, the plan was already obsolete by the time it was announced. It became the last proposal that sought to salvage a mixed, united Bosnia-Herzegovina; subsequent proposals either re-enforced or contained elements of partition.

On April 1, Cyrus Vance announced his resignation as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General. He was replaced by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg on May 1.

Owen-Stoltenberg

In late July, representatives of Bosnia-Herzegovina's three warring factions entered into a new round of negotiations. On August 20, the U.N. mediators Thorvald Stoltenberg and David Owen unveiled a map that would partition Bosnia into three ethnic mini-states, in which Bosnian Serb forces would be given 52 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina's territory, Muslims would be allotted 30 percent and Bosnian-Herzegovina Croats would receive 18 percent. On August 29, 1993 Bosniaks rejected the Plan.

Contact Group plan

Between February and October 1994, the Contact Group (U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and Germany) made steady progress towards a negotiated settlement of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was known as a Contact Group plan, and a heavy pressure was put on Bosnian Serbs to accept the plan when Federal Republic of Yugoslavia imposed an embargo on Drina river.

ee also

*Inter-Entity Boundary Line
*Dayton Peace Accords

External links

* [http://terkepek.adatbank.transindex.ro/kepek/netre/290.gifMap of Vance-Owen peace plan]