Dayton Agreement

From Freepedia

The Dayton Agreement or Dayton Accords is the name given to the agreement at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to end the war in the former Yugoslavia that had gone on for the previous three years, in particular the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It marked the first occasion when three-dimensional satellite image technology and digital cartography was used to determine and delineate borders in an official treaty.

The conference took place from November 1 to November 21, 1995. The main participants were Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović, chief American negotiator Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark. The secure site was chosen in a bid to curb the participants' ability to negotiate in the media rather than at the bargaining table. In a far-from-subtle hint of the consequences should agreement not be reached, early in the talks a formal reception for the participants was held in a hangar at the nearby U.S. Air Force Musuem next to a B-2 stealth bomber.

The formal agreement was signed in Paris, France on December 14.

The present political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its structure of government were generally agreed upon as part of the Dayton accords.

The agreement mandated a wide range of international organizations to monitor, oversee, and implement components of the agreement. The NATO-led IFOR (Implementation Force) was responsible for implementing military aspects of the agreement.