The US ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the Bosnia peace agreement, arrived here Thursday for a two-day visit to see progress made in nearly five years of the accord's implementation, the US embassy here said.
On his arrival, Holbrooke visited a famous symbol of 1992-95 Sarajevo siege, a narrow tunnel used as the only supply link between the capital and the rest of Bosnia.
He was to travel to Mostar for talks with officials of this divided southern city. Mostar's Muslim mayor and his Croat deputy were praised by the international community for their joint efforts in overcoming ethnic tensions.
Later Thursday, Holbrooke was to visit the eastern town of Srebrenica, the site of the worst atrocity committed in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
More than 7,000 men of the former Muslim enclave of Srebrenica were reported missing, probably killed, after the Bosnian Serb forces overran the area in 1995. Since the end of the war some 4,000 bodies have been exhumed from mass graves in the vicinity of Srebrenica.
On Friday, Holbrooke was to meet in Sarajevo with the Bosnian Muslim leader of the past decade Alija Izetbegovic, the head of the main Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA), who stepped down from the country's presidency earlier this month, and a moderate Bosnian Serb Premier Milorad Dodik.
He was also to meet with Haris Silajdzic, the head of the mainly Muslim center Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina (SBIH), tipped by many as Izetbegovic's successor, and the opposition leaders, Zlatko Lagumdzija of the multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Kresimir Zubak, the leader of New Croat Initiative (NHI).
The November 1995 peace agreement was reached after marathon negotiations led by Holbrooke in Dayton, Ohio, ending the three and a half years of bloodshed in the country.
Under the agreement Bosnia remained a single state, but made up of the two semi-independent entities, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb-run Republika Srpska.
Some 20,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops still remained in Bosnia -- SARAJEVO (AFP)
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