Balkan Odyssey a personal account of the international peace efforts following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: March 1996
Language: eng
Number of pages: 389
ISBN-13: 9780151002214
First sentence: THE PHONE RANG on the afternoon of Wednesday 29 July 1992 as I sat in may London office at 20 Queen Anne's Gate looking out on St James's Park across Birdcage Walk, one of the most peaceful scenes in inner London.
Description: Balkan Odyssey is David Owen's personal chronicle of the struggle to bring an end to the wars in the former Yugoslavia, wars marked by brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, ultranationalism, religious bigotry, and racism. It offers a rare, unvarnished look inside the realm of international diplomacy. Owen describes the consequences of the Clinton Administration's opposition to the Vance-Owen peace plan.

He recounts how other peace settlements were hindered by divisions between the United States, Europe, and Russia as well as the United Nations and NATO, and by the bad faith of warring leaders who believed they had more to gain through war than peace. Owen also gives an account of the NATO assault on Bosnian Serb positions and the latest attempts at reaching a settlement.

. Written with candor and reason, Balkan Odyssey is a day-to-day account of the traps and tangles of diplomacy and the enduring dangers of policy that is dictated by rhetoric instead of reality. It is an essential work for understanding the gravest threat to world peace since the height of the Cold War.