إرشادات مقترحات البحث معلومات خط الزمن الفهارس الخرائط الصور الوثائق الأقسام

مقاتل من الصحراء


           



How have you reconciled the absence of a single military command in Bosnia as creating a single unified nation?

SECRETARY CHRISTOPHER: The government will have foreign policy powers. It will have a parliament. It will have a police force. I think that will turn out to provide for a unified nation.

We spent a good deal of time talking about a central bank for the country, and there will be a single national bank for the country. So there are many national powers consistent with a federal government.

We also have quite detailed military annex and detailed provisions with respect to arms control. So, overall, I think when you examine the agreement, you'll find that my statement about it being consistent with a national or federal government is borne out by the documents.

David.

QUESTION (David Martin, CBS): You say here you settled definitively the territorial issues. And then down at the bottom of the page it says, "The status of Brcko will be determined by arbitration within one year." Has the whole Posavina corridor issue just been put off for a year, and is that how you managed to get an agreement here?  

SECRETARY CHRISTOPHER: The Posavina corridor issue was a serious one that was negotiated up to the very end. But the status quo will remain there.

The present lines of confrontation will be controlled by IFOR during the course of the next year. There will be arbitration to be followed after that. The parties resolved this issue by deciding on that, but it's a relatively small portion of the country as a whole.

Because the issue will be under the control of IFOR, because there is no immediate change in the status of the issue, I think it will not be a destabilizing factor. That was, as I say, one of say, perhaps a hundred issues that were debated. The parties finally decided they would maintain the status quo during the period of IFOR, but there would be an arbitration to  consider the matter as to what its future would be.

QUESTION: (Dave Marrich, ABC News, Nightline) Already members of the Bosnian Serb negotiating team here are being quoted as calling this agreement invalid and a great mistake. Whom do you hold responsible for the implementation of this agreement inside the Serb entity in Bosnia? And what are the mechanisms to assure that implementation?  

SECRETARY CHRISTOPHER: This agreement today was the result of agreements between three parties -- Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. The Serbian delegation was led by President Milosevic. He came to the negotiation authorized by the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, a signed authorization for him to negotiate and commit them. So we, hence, find a fixing of responsibility in President Milosevic.

We will, over time, look to him to assure the assent of the Bosnian Serbs to this agreement.

The most powerful force, of course, in that situation will be the fact that the people of Sarajevo, the people of Bosnia as a whole, are going to see the benefits of peace. I think President Milosevic feels that those will strongly outweigh statements made by members of the Bosnian Serbs, or perhaps making statements for their effect at the present time.

This is a situation that we'll have to watch as it moves forward. The next several weeks will

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