THE US envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, said yesterday he had won commitments from the presidents of Serbia and Bosnia to abide by the Dayton peace accords despite a row over two Bosnian Serb officers detained in Sarajevo.
"We have all agreed today, President (Alija) Izetbegovic in Sarajevo, President (Slobodan) Milosevic here in Belgrade, that the Dayton process must continue, it must not slow down," he said after meeting Mr Milosevic in Belgrade.
"Both presidents reaffirm their full commitment to Dayton. There has been no change," said Mr Holhrooke, who had flown from Sarajevo where he saw the Bosnian president.
"We had a very good discussion with President Milosevic which lasted for about three hours. We will return to Sarajevo in the morning to continue discussion with President Izetbegovic," he said.
The US Assistant Secretary of State and architect of the Dayton agreement which brought peace to Bosnia after 43 months of war was back in the Balkans on an emergency mission to get the faltering peace process back on track after the deal had shown signs of unravelling over the past week.
"We are here to insist on full compliance with Dayton, no exceptions, no changes," he said in Sarajevo. "We consider this as the first serious challenge to the Dayton agreement. All three parties are still saying they will comply but they are arguing over what compliance means. We are here, to help them straighten it out.
The Bosnian Serb Army commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, on Thursday ordered his troops to break off all contacts with Nato peace forces, an edict which seemed to take hold in the senior ranks. Gen Mladic acted in anger over the Bosnian government's detention of Bosnian Serbs, including a general and a colonel, on suspicion of involvement with war crimes.
Although the civilian side of the peace process has been less disrupted than the military, international mediators have been struggling to ensure the smooth transfer of five Serb held suburbs to Bosnia's Muslim Croat federation.
Also spoiling what had been a remarkable two months of progress in Bosnia since the signing of the Dayton accord was last week's riot in Mostar, where Croats rejected a European Union arbitration decision on municipal boundaries.
Mr Holbrooke met President Izetbegovic earlier yesterday and told reporters: "We absolutely reaffirmed full compliance with Dayton . . . We furthermore reaffirmed America's support for Mayor Koshnick's proposals in regard to Mostar."
Mr Hans Koshnick, the EU administrator for Mostar, rendered the arbitration decision last Wednesday which provoked a violent Croat response.
Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, has disowned the decision by Gen Mladic to sever links with Nato peacekeepers, a senior Serb official said yesterday. Mr Rajko Kasagic, "prime minister" of the breakaway Serb republic, said: "President Karadzic has warned the army chief of staff that he was not in a position to take such a decision."