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On 23 January 1999, the countries of the Great Lakes region suspended sanctions against Burundi.

The donor countries hoped the governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina would use the promised $ 5.1 Billion post-war reconstruction aid to undertake the structural changes necessary to transition from communism to capitalism.

NATO’s strategy in the war with Yugoslavia over Kosovo isn’t working. As the Alliance’s bombing campaign enters its fourth week, it is Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic who is still winning the political game.

Since the suspension of sanctions against Burundi on 23 January 1999, Burundian diplomacy has been directed towards a single objective: the resumption of international co-operation, which was suspended a few weeks before the coup d’état led by Major Buyoya in 1996.

Five years after the beginning of the genocide, it is now time to review the progress made in administering justice to those implicated in its planning and implementation.

The early part of 1999 has been turbulent for Republika Srpska. Political life has been unsettled by three separate and hardly-related crises: the decision of the High Representative to remove from office the RS President Nikola Poplasen; the decision of International Arbitrator Roberts Owen to give the municipality of Brcko neither to RS nor to the Federation but to both as a condominium; and the NATO air-strikes on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

The new Macedonian government marked its first hundred days in office in early March.

With just over two years to run before the end of his term as Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic remains entrenched in power in Belgrade.

The Kosovo peace talks, held at Rambouillet (France) under the auspices of the six-nation Contact Group, have been suspended until 15 March 1999 after a provisional agreement was reached on granting substantial autonomy for Kosovo.

While last spring saw conflict erupt in Kosovo's central Drenica region when Serbian security forces attacked and killed residents of the villages of Prekaz and Likoshan, this spring brings the possibility of peace.

Electoral reform is on the agenda this year in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For too long the country has been ruled by leaders who draw support from only one of the three main ethnic groups.

The Arbitral Tribunal on Brcko meets this month, and may or may not this time make its final decision, after postponements in 1997 and 1998.

The international community collectively heaved a sigh of relief when Cambodia’s rival factions moved back from the brink of disaster and agreed to form a fresh coalition government in November 1998 after weeks of violent protests and political deadlock.

The recent parliamentary elections and the change of government in Macedonia in many respects are a landmark in the country’s development.

Premier Pandeli Majko’s new coalition government is slowly consolidating its hold over the administration, though the overall power of the government remains weak after the country was rocked in September by the worst political violence since the uprising of March 1997.

In the past few weeks the Belgrade authorities have sacked a number of key public officials. The two most prominent were security chief Stanisic and head of the army general staff Perisic. The firings triggered much speculation in the international media about the stability of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime.

Three years after the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia), the country has many of the trappings usually associated with statehood such as a common flag, currency, vehicle licence plate and passport.

The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) has dominated Croatian political life since multi-party elections in April 1990 brought an end to communist rule.

On 2 August 1998, barely 14 months after the end of the war initiated by the anti-Mobutu coalition, the emergence of a new armed movement announced the beginning of a further "war of liberation" in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this time against the regime of Laurent Désiré Kabila.

The Sandzak is an area within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that borders Serbia and Montenegro.

To promote a resolution of the Kosovo crisis, the international community should propose arrangements granting the people of Kosovo the status of intermediate sovereignty.

In outline form, the elements of the various agreements suggested by ICG, based on our presence in the region and extensive consultations around it over the last few months, are as follows: As winter approaches in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia), conditions for refugee returns to that country become increasingly difficult. In neighbouring Croatia, by contrast, the weather is generally milder so that, given political will, refugees should be able to return to their homes throughout the winter months.

Macedonians go to the polls on 18 October 1998 in the first of two rounds of voting to elect 120 members of the country's parliament.

Cambodia’s electoral process re-lit the candle of democracy that had first flickered into flame with the restoration of peace in 1991, after more than two decades of strife.

Despite considerable progress since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) in November 1995 in consolidating the peace and rebuilding normal life in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia), international efforts do not appear to be achieving the goal of establishing Bosnia as a stable, functioning state, able at some point to run its own affairs without the need for continued international help.

Sarajevo’s Bosniac authorities were given the opportunity to demonstrate their much-vaunted commitment to multi-ethnicity when, on 3 February 1998, representatives of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia), the Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina (Federation), Sarajevo Canton and the international community adopted the Sarajevo Declaration.

The stakes in Bosnia’s forthcoming elections, the fifth internationally-supervised poll since the end of the war, could not be higher, for Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) and also for the international community.

During the past six months, Serbia's southern, predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo has emerged from international obscurity to become the world's most reported conflict zone.

Croat extremists put Drvar into the spotlight in April 1998 with murders and riots against returning Serbs and the international community.

On 2 August 1998, barely 14 months after the fall of the late Zairian President Mobutu, a new armed movement in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced the beginning of another “war of liberation”, this time against the regime of Laurent Désiré Kabila. 

The reintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) has been consistently obstructed by the main Bosnian Croat party, the Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZBiH).

On 2 August 1998, barely 14 months after the fall of the late Zairian President Mobutu, a new armed movement in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced the beginning of another “war of liberation”, this time against the regime of Laurent Désiré Kabila.

As the one former Yugoslav republic which has managed to keep itself out of the wars of Yugoslav dissolution, Macedonia has often appeared to outsiders as a beacon of hope in the Balkans.

For the first time, most of the parties involved in the conflict in Burundi were present during the first round of negotiations that took place in Arusha from 15 to 21 June 1998.

Relations between Albanians from Albania proper and their ethnic kin over the border in Kosovo are complex.

On 1 July 1997 Konjic became the first municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) to be officially recognised as an Open City by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Cambodia is set to take to the polls in barely six weeks time, with some fearing the elections will cement in place a de facto dictatorship and others seeing them as the last chance to ensure that the country’s fledgling democratic process remains on track.

Croat-controlled Jajce and Bosniac-controlled Travnik are both municipalities to which displaced persons who do not belong to the majority ethnic group have been returning in substantial numbers.

When on 15 May 1998 Slobodan Milosevic met with Ibrahim Rugova it was the first time that the Yugoslav president had met with an Albanian leader from Kosovo in close to a decade.

Kosovo, an impoverished region at the southern tip of Serbia, is drawing ineluctably closer to war with each passing day.

International organisations working to help displaced Bosnians return to their pre-war homes – arguably the most important element of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) – have declared 1998 the “year of minority returns”.

Burundi has spent the most part of the past five years embroiled in a vicious civil war that has so far claimed more than 200,000 lives and triggered massive movements of refugees and displaced persons and which continues to add to instability throughout the Great Lakes region.

Since 28 February when Serbian special police launched a brutal offensive against alleged ethnic Albanian (Kosovar) separatists in Kosovo, events in that ethnically-divided province of rump Yugoslavia have featured prominently on the front pages of newspapers and in television and radio news broadcasts throughout the world.

The fate of the Brcko area, whether it should be in the Federation or Republika Srpska, was considered too contentious to be resolved in the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) and was left to binding arbitration.

To many who followed the Bosnian war from abroad, Sarajevo symbolised Bosnia and Herzegovina’s rich tradition of multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity.

In Bosnia’s local elections on 13 and 14 September 1997, parties representing displaced Serbs from Croat-held Drvar, Bosansko Grahovo and Glamoc won either a majority or a plurality of council seats in these three municipalities in Canton 10 of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This report studies the background to the latest crisis affecting the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. It examines current conditions in the country, assesses the key issues requiring redress and offers a number of specific recommendations for international policy-makers aimed at shoring up political stability

Achieving the ambitious goals of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (DPA) -- forging a unified state out of the shaky Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and resistant and unstable Republika Srpska -- is a complex and difficult undertaking which has not been made easier by the quest for a so-called “exit strategy”. 

Prospects for lasting peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina have improved in recent months as a result of a clear shift in approach towards implementation of the peace plan on the part of the international community.

Images that usually first come to mind in relation to the Balkans are of ‘ancient inter-ethnic hatreds’, irrational bloodletting among neighbours, and unpredictable eruptions of senseless violence.

On the night of 2-3 May 1997, some 25 houses were set ablaze in the Croat-controlled municipality of Drvar, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federation).

Apart from stopping the fighting, silencing the guns and separating forces, the single clearest promise of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) was that Bosnian refugees and internally displaced persons would be able to return home.

Given the critical role that the media played in the destruction of both Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the on-going role they play in fanning the flames of ethnic hatred, the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has devoted much time, energy and money to this field.

With the ongoing reconstruction efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and plans for the imminent privatisation of a number of industrial enterprises, the question has arisen as to whether the Bosnia and Herzegovina central government or the sub-state entities – Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – properly succeed to the immovable assets of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia located on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This memorandum seeks to answer this question.

The violent events in Mostar on 10 February – and the failure of the International Police Task Force (IPTF) and the Stabilisation Force (SFOR) to either anticipate or control them – constitute a mortal threat to the peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the continued existence of the Bosniac-Croat Federation.

The Dayton Peace Agreement postponed a decision on the fate of the Brcko area, one of the peace talks’ most contentious and potentially explosive issues, until arbitration could take place. A decision is expected by 15 February.

Arrest of Suspects Indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal

On 13 August the International Crisis Group monitoring the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) issued a report calling for the postponement of the elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the grounds that the minimum conditions for a free and fair poll did not exist.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has been monitoring the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) in Bosnia and Herzegovina since early March 1996.