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| David Owen and his Balkan bungling The first duty of any reviewer is to say whether the book under review will be of interest to the general reader. In the case of Lord Owen's Balkan Odyssey (London 1995, New York 1996), this poses an unusual dilemma. On the one hand, this is clearly a book for specialists in Bosnian affairs and international diplomacy. General readers will quickly weary of the blow-by-blow accounts of conferences and reports to committees, w here every blow sends a shower of acronyms into the air like sparks from a blacksmith's anvil: VOPP, JAP, ICFY, UNSCR, UNPA and so on. more > The Institution that Saw no Evil Only two months after the replacement of UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia, by IFOR, the 60,000-strong NATO-led army deployed in the wake of the Dayton peace agreement, traces of the UN military presence are already hard to find. A few white-painted trucks and armoured personnel carriers not yet restored to their original martial green and a few tattered blue flags and logos are almost all that remains of an operation whose passing virtually no one in Bosnia and few even inside the UN itself speak of with anything except relief. Peace may have come to Bosnia, however belatedly and provisionally, but that is no thanks to the UN or its peacekeeping operation. On the contrary, the lesson of Bosnia seems to be that peacekeeping, touted by the UN secretariat as recently as five years go as one of the principal means of ensuring international order, is probably morally bankrupt and certainly an idea whose time has passed. more > home | about us | publications | news | contact | bosnia | search | bosnia report
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