Political Quotes

“I certainly agree with my colleague from New Hampshire, and I commend her for her leadership in getting this legislation drafted. It is an opportunity to provide a very meaningful chance for Bosnians and Herzegovinians to live the good life and remain in the area, but it is also in the absolute national security interests of the United States of America. We can't tend to everything, but we saw 20 years ago--25 years ago and forward--with the war in the Balkans what could happen and what almost happened to security in all of Europe. We know this has been a flash point down through the decades and even the centuries. To the extent that we can address some things that we didn't get done at Dayton, this will help people in the region and the former Yugoslavia and also help the United States of America. The Dayton Agreement was a crowning achievement, but it didn't provide Bosnia with a constitutional framework and political structures that could effectively govern on into the 21st century. And the Senator from New Hampshire and I certainly saw that. We were meeting with the tripartite head of the government after the ceremony we attended. Dan Serwer of Johns Hopkins University recently observed: We imposed the Dayton Accords, but we imposed what the ethic nationalist warring parties told us they could live with. It is therefore unsurprising that one way or another, ethnic nationalists have dominated Bosnia almost continuously, making it ungovernable, since 1995.…”