The United States, more than most western Democracies, tends to view its political leaders through domestic affairs, tends to judge them on how well they do on things like the economy, taxes and crime. It is also true, I think, in a more subtle way the United States tends to judge her leaders for her leadership capability, for them being presidential by how they handle foreign policy. I think it is most accurate to say that most Americans, frankly, don't care very much what happens outside America's borders. A very small percentage, organizations such as this Los Angeles World Affairs Council, are the ones who tend to implement U.S. policy most significantly.

The issue of Bosnia has been on top of the American foreign policy in terms of debate, maybe not in terms of response for about four years. I think it is fair to say that it is generally an issue that only a few thousand people tend to follow very closely and tend to be involved with. That runs from people who used to be in the State Department, people who are affiliated with organizations such as this one, religious leaders who see the plight of Bosnia and its multicultural society having relevance to their own preachings of tolerance. Surprisingly, leaders on college campuses.

Twenty years ago when Vietnam was the issue those college leaders were preaching disengagement. Today's college leaders, surprisingly, are preaching engagement. But please keep in mind that when we do have a chance to meet like this that you are viewed by the American community as the leaders who set the trend. We just had a little conversation at the table, and it was about how complex the issue is.

It is quite complex, but quite frankly so is the Rwandan issue, the Cambodian issue, the Mad Cow disease. Before you know it, everything happening beyond our borders can appear to be very complex. We shouldn't try to oversimplify things, but we ought to take effective measures to address problems. You do need to come up with a simplified strategy, something that is manageable.Therefore, you are part of that tool of making Bosnia more manageable in terms of American decision making.

I'm sure I have Republicans, Democrats here as well as those who are somewhere in between. When Bosnia was being debated in political circles, those who were in favor of some concrete action would always try to simplify the issue to a simple agenda. An example would be Senator Dole, Democrats and Republicans in Congress who basically said the Bosnians had to be given the right to defend themselves and the arms embargo must be lifted. They tended to take the entire discussion in the direction of genocide is occurring. If people can't defend themselves, we must allow that.

Admittedly, it was a very simplified message. But it needed to be in order to raise the necessary level of will to bring about some action. On the other hand, those who tried to say we really couldn't do very much always tended to talk about Bosnia as an age-old hatreds, very complex problem, involves the Russians, the Europeans. It is just something we ought to stay out of.

Of course, the more people would make it seem like a complex problem, like a civil war, the more you were all encouraged not to care about it or at least not want to see action. Then President Clinton, was very instrumental in seeing the Dayton Agreement tailored - then all of a sudden the rhetoric of the administration had to change from why we shouldn't be involved to why we should send 20,000 U.S. troops to be a part of a peacekeeping enforcement force.

Once again, it became very interesting to see how the message was simplified from being one where age-old hatred were involved, the civil war. All of a sudden the message was being simplified as to how there was a peace. The people were going to try to reconcile. Unfortunately, the message is not that simple. It involves a lot more.

I would like to speak to you about Dayton, what it means for Bosnia and the future. Maybe first I should talk about Bosnia and what it means to you. On your television screens, and mostly in your newspapers, you tended to see Bosnia as a human drama, a place where people were being murdered, where genocide was being committed, and therefore, you saw it as a moral issue. Some of you might have started to see it as a legal issue because there was an arms embargo being placed on a country, and that country couldn't defend itself.

But beyond that I think most people were discouraged about thinking about Bosnia as an issue where strategic interests of the United States and the international community as a whole were involved. Let me make the point. The strategic interests of the United States are very much involved in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fact that genocide was occurring there, the fact that moral and legal considerations were also paramount did not make any less of a strategic issue.

Why is it a strategic issue? First of all, Bosnia Herzegovina happens to be at a key place geographically. It is a place where several different empires touch and ongoing instability in that country and in that region tends to raise instability in all of Europe, and frankly in all of southeastern Europe and Asia or the Middle East.

Beyond that the example that is being provided by Bosnia is also something that serves as a precedent for many of the newly free - I don't want to say newly democratic nations in eastern Europe. It is interesting that the extremists in Russia will be the most likely to call upon solidarity with the extremists in Serbia.

Many people say, What is the cause of the war in Bosnia? Of course, we've heard the theory of age-old hatreds. But in my opinion, it's actually the transition from communism, the totalitarian system, to democracy and the free market system. That transition demands a significant cost from the society that is making transition from its institutions, like the military, like the bureaucracy, and of course, from its leadership. In this case, particularly as far as Serbia was concerned, one part of the former Yugoslavia, the leadership was looking for a way to perpetuate its power. They didn't want to be held accountable to democracy and not be held accountable to the free market system. Why do I say not be held accountable to the free market system? Communism supported certain institutions on the basis of arbitrary decisions that sometimes had very little to do with economics. So if you have a big army in a newly-emerging democracy and free market system, now you must justify that army. If you are effectively a dictator and you run a totalitarian state, elections mean that you can actually be thrown out of power.

How do you stay in power? How do you make sure you maintain a big military? You create a threat. If the threat is real, so be it. But if isn't, then you need to create one or at least heighten whatever minimum threat may exist. The best way to do this is through nationalism and fascism. There is someone on the other side, next door, who is a danger to your family, who is a danger to your God, who if allowed to come close to your house might set it on fire. If allowed to come into your house, would rape your wife and kill your children. That's the type of appeal that's was being made by the former Yugoslavia, especially by the leadership in Belgrade.

So I come back to the significance of Bosnia. There are other leaders, including in Russia, who would love to use this type of argument as a way to stay in power or come to power. There is also the issue of Bosnia as a test ground for the principles of western society, particularly those principles that we in the western society wish to see applied on an international basis - the concepts of democracy, respect for human rights, tolerance. A few years ago, western countries used to preach them to the developing and nondeveloping countries, and what happened in Bosnia, particularly in terms of the Bosnian Muslims, was perceived by many in the Muslim world and I think in many ways rightfully so, as an application of double standards. In other words, preach to those developing countries but when it happens in your own backyard, you don't have to do much about it.

Why? Let me give you an answer to that. One of my colleagues at the United Nations, the ambassador of the European Union to the United Nations, back in 1992 in a presentation he made to the Fletcher Club, trying to be very upfront and open, and I think achieving it in a very credible fashion. He said, "If most of the people being murdered in Bosnia were Christian, and most of the people doing the murdering were Muslim, the response of Europe would be very different.

Now that's a shameful conclusion to have to discuss the conclusion of the situation in Bosnia from. It has tremendous implications for the concept of a global village or a global society based upon some common values and principles by which we can all learn how to live a little more cooperatively together. Of course, this type of selective application of international principles has a real impact on those international institutions that are behind these principles. Like the United Nations, like the International Court of Justice, those economic institutions like the World Bank, or NATO.

I think that it is no accident that in this country many diverse communities from the American Jewish community to church communities to the American Muslim community came together and were the most active in demanding action regarding what was going on in Bosnia and the violations of the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law.

Simply put, if we are going to selectively apply international law then there is no more international law. An international law is what allows our system of commerce, regional cooperation, stability to exist. If in fact, we go back to saying the United States doesn't really have dollars invested there, there is no oil there, and we don't really have any reason to do something about that situation. While on the other hand when there is oil and there are economic interests, we choose to act; we are going to find ourselves pretty soon without a basis to act, not to mention without friends to act.

It will be very interesting to see, for instance, how the whole Iraq-Kuwait situation would have turned out if Bosnia would have happened before. Would the United States have managed to gather such a consensus on action? My guess is it would have been much more difficult. I frankly think that some of the terrorist incidents that we are seeing in the Middle East, including the latest, most unfortunate murders in Saudi Arabia, are a reflection of the frustration that is seen in some parts of the world regarding the application of these double standards.

I was supposed to talk to you about Dayton and what's happening with the Dayton implementation process. Let me briefly address that and I'll try to summarize a few key issues because, as usual, it's complex. What were the objectives when we went into Dayton? Let me just tell you this right now. If we wanted to divide Bosnia, if we wanted to find some ways to have our society continue to disintegrate, then we didn't need to go to Dayton to do that. That's been on the table for years. We needed Dayton to accomplish exactly the opposite - the reintegration and reconciliation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Dayton was designed, of course, to bring an end to the war. It did bring an end to the war, but it was also designed to bring a real endurable peace. In Bosnia, endurable peace meant first that our society was reintegrated. Bosnians didn't live in ethnic ghettos, and to have ethnic ghettos come about has a long-term consequence of Dayton would not be consistent either with our history, of what I believe, is necessary for at least durable peace.

Those who advocate now that Dayton was actually nothing more a shrewd hoax with the intended result of dividing Bosnia under some other pretense, I think are missing the point. Dayton was designed to bring about a new leadership committed to the reintegration of Bosnia. It was designed to bring about the renewal, the emergence of the superiority of certain values of an open society. Those values being tolerance, coexistence, respect for human rights, and democracy. We have some of this in a part of the country, but we don't have these principles for an open society in much of the country. It is necessary to have this established throughout the entire country.

It was designed to bring about freedom of movement. Most Bosnians didn't dare travel to areas under the control of the extremist Serb leadership, or even in some cases, the extremist Croat leadership. Most Bosnians, frankly, didn't dare travel much beyond their village. The idea of peace was to allow them to do that. Finally, this agreement was designed to allow refugees to come back to their homes.

Approximately more than one-half of Bosnians are refugees or displaced persons. Approximately one-third of the Bosnians are outside their own country right now. The agreement was designed to enhance stability in the region, bring about a new military balance. This is where we have, on the one hand, the agreement recently reached on arms control in the region, and on the other hand, the American program to equip and train the Bosnian military so that it come up to some credible, deterrent level against a potential enemy.

The agreement was designed to enhance regional democracy and human rights, not just in Bosnia, but the region as a whole needed greater support for democracy and human rights, particularly in Serbia. The agreement was designed to help the countries of the former Yugoslavia and there are five countries -Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedeonia, and now this new Yugoslavia called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is really Serbia Montenegro. The agreement was designed to have these countries move into the European Union, NATO, and other western European institutions in order to integrate all of Europe. And of course, the Dayton Agreement was designed to bring about the rebuilding of the country, physically, socially, culturally, politically.

What has been the result? The war has ended, and I think it will not restart. I think. But frankly, just about every one of the other objectives I mentioned has not been met. We don't have a quality peace. We don't have refugees returning to their homes. We don't have freedom of movement. We don't have tolerance. We don't have democracy in much of the country.

Most importantly, we don't have war criminals being imprisoned. I bring this point up as the key point because despite all the rhetoric we hear, the people on the ground were starting to reconcile on their own. Local communities who happened to be on different sides of the line made their own arrangements for people to cross back and forth. Sometimes to cross back and forth for jobs, or to visit families, or even visit cemeteries.

But the war criminals, and when I say war criminals it is not rhetoric, it's those who have been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, didn't see this reconciliation in their interests. So every time they saw some reconciliation happening, they either ordered it to stop or instigated some incident to make it stop.

Regional stability, military stability in the area? Well, to some extent it's been successful because we have an agreement on arms control and we will have the Bosnian army being trained up to a level and equipped so they can be a more effective defensive force and we don't need to rely on anyone else in the future.

The real issue is there is no regional enhancement of democracy and human rights. In fact, the situation in Serbia has, unfortunately, gone backwards. The Serb people are suffering a very heavy price for the continued manipulation they are exposed to. They are taken from fascism, nationalism, to Stalinist communism, back and forth, kind of mixing a very dangerous mix.

Has there been any integration into western institutions? Well, the European Union has made it very clear that it does not wish to see not only the countries of the former Yugoslavia come in very quickly but even some of the countries of central Europe and eastern Europe. Much of the process of the enlargement of the European Union has been put on hold, and I think, unfortunately, the European Union and Europe as a whole are at a very critical point. They don't have a vision of what the future is and the European Union is increasingly becoming an institution of exclusion rather than inclusion which has its own very dangerous economic and political consequences.

What is the future? Very briefly, I think in the immediate term, we are going to continue to try to find the answer to Bosnia and Herzegovina's stability, real peace. I am afraid that this has to start with the arrest of war criminals. There is now talk of having free elections in Bosnia. In fact, everyone is saying it must go ahead. Ironically, they are saying that conditions don't exist for fair and free elections right now, but we must have elections.

I am not sure why that is. I would have thought that elections were supposed to be an expression of the people rather than just a tool that is called upon to arbitrarily signify the passing of one stage of the Dayton Agreement into another. I am concerned that unless we arrest the war criminals and still go ahead with the elections that we will create a very bad precedent of what democracy is all about, not only in Bosnia but in the region. It will create a cynicism regarding democracy that has not been experienced even during communism.

Elections where war criminals control the institutions of power, of media, where they prevent opposition or where they continue to engage in ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses certainly can only increase the strength and legitimacy of those war criminals and decrease the respect of the ordinary person for the concept of democracy, especially a country that has never experienced democracy in the past.

Longer-term. Most of you do not know Bosnia very well. Bosnia is actually a country where people are traditionally very hard-working, very sophisticated regarding the mechanical skills - I'm an exception, being a lawyer. Most Bosnians you see in this country, you will see them doing all sorts of jobs from doctors to plumbers to car mechanics, and that is what we have traditionally done very well in Bosnia. We have had automobile factories, small plane factories, sophisticated manufactured goods, and we've produced skis and tennis shoes, and that future is there for us, as well.

But without providing the stable political base upon which the country can catch a breath and create a new vision for herself, I am afraid the skills we have, the aid we receive in rebuilding the country will never be fully utilized. Right now the next few months are critical for the future of Bosnia. I would like to bring you back to the message of before. They are critical to the future of the international community, your society. If you are satisfied that Bosnians should suffer on a level of democracy, human rights that is not only substandard but at a level less than they ever experienced under communism, then I am afraid this is a legacy that will be left forever with the United States.

How can we talk about the flaws in the elections in Albania, a democracy in Latin America, or human rights in Asia, if we in fact to certify elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina while war criminals are free and while ethnic cleansing still continues. It seems to be a blatant example of form over substance, and I am afraid it will catch up with all of us unless we take effective measures to end it.

Very briefly, I wore a pin tonight called 'War Child.' It is an example of one thing that some people in the international community are doing to improve the situation in Bosnia. 'War Child' stands for an organization that has been created over the last few years over the conflict in Bosnia where people from the entertainment community have committed themselves to provide assistance to the children of Bosnia and Herzegovina, now increasingly ravished children in other countries, including Afghanistan and South Africa.

There are many things you can do. In this particular organization, 'War Child' we have had the commitment of diverse personalities. We also have organizations based on political, humanitarian, cultural considerations. I would ask you to consider what may be in your interests and to take an interest. I believe it is the United States who has to be the leader when it comes to foreign policy issues. It will not be congressmen or senators. It will not be politicians in an election year when the most important issues are taxes, economy, and focused on the domestic agenda.