Bosnia Does Not Need New Peace Deal, Biden Says.

Source: Reuters/NYTimes

PRISTINA (Reuters) - Bosnia is the Balkan country most at risk of new violence, but does not need to redo the peace deal that created an ethnically divided state, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on a tour that ended on Friday.

Biden traveled to Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo this week to signal renewed U.S. engagement in a region engulfed by war in the 1990s when Yugoslavia collapsed. In a speech to Bosnia's parliament, he warned continued ethnic divide could keep the country among Europe's poorest and could lead anew to fighting.

Yet in an interview on Thursday night with Reuters and several other publications, Biden opposed brokering a new international conference to replace the 1995 Dayton peace treaty, which ended the fighting that killed 100,000, but left the country divided into Serb and Muslim-Croat halves.

"Dayton Two is not needed," Biden said at the U.S. military base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. "As a matter of fact, Dayton Two at this moment I believe would only harden positions."



Read more: http://nytimes.com/reuters/2009/05/22/news/news-us-usa-bosnia-biden.html