Balkan Conflict
After his term as Prime Minister, Bildt was active as a mediator in the Balkans conflict, serving as the European Union Special Envoy to Former Yugoslavia from June 1995, Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference in November 1995, and High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina from December 1995 to June 1997 immediately after the Bosnian War. From 1999 to 2001, he served as the United Nations Secretary General's Special Envoy for the Balkans.
Bildt is or has been considered persona non grata in several countries for remarks he has made against various governments, including Croatia, where he "lost the credibility necessary for the role of a peace mediator" by suggesting that the former President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, was as guilty of war crimes as the Krajina Serb leader Milan Martić. He was also considered unwelcome in Russia after comparing their handling of the 2008 South Ossetia War to Nazi Germany under Hitler, and he was recently prevented from visiting Sri Lanka.
During Operation Flash and Operation Storm in Croatia he demanded military operations by the UN and/or the NATO against the Croatian army.
Read more about this topic: Carl Bildt
Famous quotes containing the words balkan and/or conflict:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)