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Today the tragic headlines come from Kosovo, where the ethnic cleansers are back in business. Kosovo is in grave danger of becoming another Bosnia. Arguably this is beyond my mandate. But Sarajevo is 200 kilometres from Kosovo. What happens there affects what happens in Bosnia. It is as if we repair one house, only to discover the one next door is burning down. This is supposed to be the year of returns to Bosnia. But it is rapidly becoming the year of the exodus from Kosovo. So as the person charged with leading the effort to clear up after the last Balkan war, I say with particular feeling that we have a duty to learn the lessons of recent history, and to take firm action as an international community before it is too late. Otherwise we threaten our achievements - and may prolong our mission in Bosnia. A mission which is proving a success. Two and a half years after Dayton, Bosnia is at peace. Not at peace, yet, with itself. But free from war and free from fighting. We should never lose sight of that. We have traveled a long way since Dayton. Now we are entering new terrain, where increasingly it falls to the civilian organisations to lead the way. Rebuilding the country is slow and painstaking - a steady plod uphill rather than rapid dash across country. It cannot yet be done without military support. I warmly welcome SFOR's extension beyond June. It is essential if we are to build on recent achievements. Since December, I can report progress which, had I forecast it then, you might have wondered if the High Representative had taken leave of his senses. In Republika Srpska, a moderate government has emerged from the elections. SRT has been restructured, and media restructuring is starting in the Federation too, where the problems are not on the same scale. Bosnia has a new flag, passports and soon a currency. Laws on privatisation, customs, and foreign investment are agreed. Minority returns are picking up. But there have been disappointments. Recent ethnic violence in Drvar and Derventa has shown how easily successes in breaking down mono ethnic structures can provoke last ditch resistance from hard-liners. These events show that recent gains remain fragile. And they serve as a wake up call to Bosnia's leaders. Few countries in history can have benefited from the international support which your country today enjoys. But it will not last forever. Now is the time for you to seize the opportunity to build your political institutions and establish a free market economy. Not alone, but with the entire world standing shoulder to shoulder beside you, helping - literally, in many cases - to lay the foundations, and to pay for them too. If you squander this chance, if you squabble and scrap and quibble with each other, suddenly you will find that time has run out. Your people would not forgive that. Those people will shortly have the chance to have a real say in the future. The September elections, fully supervised by the OSCE, offer them the chance to turn their back on the past; to vote for a modern Bosnia, for candidates who will reach out and grasp the hand of friendship extended in the EU's Declaration yesterday, and work for the day when Bosnia will become a member state. We are working towards that - by ensuring that the whole country has access to independent media. By proper regulation of the media; and by more effective education, through the Public Service Information Campaign just launched on television across Bosnia. I ask for your support for those efforts. We will do all we can. But ultimately it is for the people of Bosnia, not for the international community, to make these choices. That is the meaning of democracy, in Bosnia as anywhere else. The lesson for Bosnians of the RS elections is that democracy works. Teachers, doctors and nurses are being paid again. International assistance - hitherto blocked - is arriving on a massive scale. The election of the new government is bringing real benefits for the people. Another crucial priority this year is refugee return. It is vital to make real progress this year if momentum is not be lost. We are not forcing people to return; we are simply helping those who wish to do so, as is their right. The difficult task, which we are now addressing, is the return of people to areas in which they are now in the minority. This needs to be carried out in an orderly and carefully coordinated manner if it is not to overload the system. Serious returns of course require there to be real security for the returnees. That means a professional multi ethnic police force. We are still a long way from that goal, although we are making progress in that direction. I welcome the vital contribution which many of your countries are making to the IPTF. The vital underpinning to any lasting peace must be a growing economy, and we are rightly devoting Herculean efforts to that end. It is too early to talk of a 'feel good factor'. But that is what we need to foster. A sense of hope. Things are improving. GDP was up by over a third in 1997. Unemployment is falling in both Entities. Wages are rising. Sarajevo and Banja Luka airports are open. Mostar is about to. We are repairing the hardware. But we need to install much of the economic and political software - the rights and freedoms which lie at the heart of the Peace Agreement, essential in any European democracy. That is proving more difficult. It is not just the legacy of war with which we are grappling, but of Communism too, and we know how long that has taken elsewhere. On the political and constitutional side, I want us to concentrate in the next six months on the strengthening of governmental institutions at all levels. I also want to press ahead with judicial reform. There can be no rule of law without a truly independent judiciary. So the priorities for the next six months are:
We need to speed up implementation. Bosnia's leaders need to begin to take more responsibility themselves. And we need to make sure that obstacles to peace with freedom and justice are removed - which means ensuring that indictees, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, face justice. There must be no let up there. We shall need to be persistent in the coming months. But we shall need to display endurance too. But remember how far we have come in thirty months. Remember that Bosnia today is a world away from the Bosnia then. Every day we are in Bosnia, we are making a difference. Every day we are getting closer to our goal of a self-sustaining peace. That goal, based on the hard work of the last two and a half years, is now within our grasp.
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