Washington, 19 November 1996 (RFE/RL) - The U.S. State Department plans to hold a symposium this week to mark the first anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords that brought an end to three years of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The event begins today in the town of Dayton in the U.S. midwestern state of Ohio, where negotiations on the accords took place a year ago.
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott will make a speech and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs John Kornblum will discuss the Dayton agreement and answer questions about it.
Kornblum's predecessor Richard Holbrooke, who was the chief U.S. negotiator of the Dayton Accords, is to be honored at a dinner tonight. Holbrooke retired from the State Department earlier this year and is now working in New York as an investment banker.
Diplomatic representatives of the Balkan countries that signed the Dayton Agreement -- Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia -- have been invited to take part in a two-day symposium on Bosnia at the University of Dayton.