http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/current/international/stories/diplomacy.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
BELGRADE (Reuter) - U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke said Friday serious talks had begun on the shape of a divided Bosnia after a breakthrough allowing Serbia's president to negotiate for the Bosnian Serbs.
``These are the first serious substantive talks about the issues of war and peace,'' he told journalists.
Holbrooke, leading a U.S. initiative to end the fighting in former Yugoslavia, said he would spend several hours with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and a team of Bosnian Serb delegates to discuss the map.
``The number one priority is Bosnia and the number one issue is the map,'' said the U.S. assistant secretary of state. ``Everyone has agreed to the 51-49 percent split but everyone's idea of 51-49 is different.''
The peace map gives 51 percent of Bosnia to a Muslim-Croat federation and 49 percent to the Serbs. It was first proposed in 1994 by the Big Power Contact Group.
``The map of 1994 will not be the final map but it will be close to it,'' said Holbrooke before leaving for the talks at a hunting lodge outside the Yugoslav capital Belgrade.
Serious negotiations on all problems caused by the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 and ensuing ethnic warfare had been made possible by an ``immensely important'' procedural breakthrough engineered by Milosevic, the envoy said.
Milosevic has persuaded the Bosnian Serbs to form a joint six-member team with Serbia to bargain over the terms of a U.S. peace deal. The Bosnian Serbs have agreed to give Milosevic a veto over the results.
While Holbrooke envoy hailed the breakthrough he cautioned that serious problems lay ahead and there were few signs of real compromise from Bosnian Serb leaders themselves.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic continued to spit defiance at the West Thursday evening, even as NATO jets and U.N. artillery kept up attacks on his army.
While he told Bosnian Serb television he welcomed the peace talks and expected ``decisive and major results'' in the first half of September he explained to his viewers there was a minimum below which he would not go.
He listed a series of locations that must remain in Serb hands, many of them desired by the Bosnian government and which the Serbs were due to give up under the peace plan.
Holbrooke was due to go to Germany Saturday to brief the five-nation Contact Group on former Yugoslavia as well as European Union peace envoy Carl Bildt.
He would then speak to NATO chiefs and ambassadors in Brussels.