Opinion / The Art of Diplomacy

Major ‘Letter’ to Hogg, 1993: World’s Most Pathetic Islamist Forgery – Ever!

Remember the world scoop/poop of Sarajevo newspaper Dnevi Avaz, featuring what was said to be fascimile copy of a letter from Prime Minister John Major to FCO Minister of State Douglas Hogg, back in May 1993? In the so-called letter Prime Minister Major says a number of nasty things about […]

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Serbia’s Parliament Passes Srebrenica Declaration

The adoption late yesterday by the Serbia National Assembly (Narodna Skupstina) of a Declaration on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia has been hitting the headlines. See eg the BBC. And RFE/RL. The EU has welcomed the move. Others in the region including various Serb liberals have strongly criticised it for not […]

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President Tadic Gets Support From Sarajevo

Leader of the Bosniac SDA party in Sarajevo Sulejman Tihic has made a very measured response to the Serbia Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica, calling for a similar resolution in the BH Assembly apologising for crimes against Serbs and Croats. He also expressed the hope that the Declaration in Belgrade would […]

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Crawf Elsewhere: Limbo Worlds

My latest piece in DIPLOMAT magazine looks at different territories round the world which do not fit into neat and tidy state categories. Or do not want to do so. Turns out there are quite a few of them. Nice drawing!

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Dnevni Avaz And John Major: World Scoop, Or World Poop?

This is excellent. The amazing Bosnian newspaper Dnevni Avaz has a World Scoop. A letter from Prime Minister John Major to FCO Minister of State Douglas Hogg – in Bosnian! Check it out. The letter (facsimile of an official (sic) translation of Major’s letter) is dated 2 May 1993. The […]

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That BH Presidency Problem – Solved (Or Not)

I think I have solved the problem of how best to elect a BH Presidency in a fair non-ethnic way. Walking the dawg through the mud of Oxfordshire has its uses. Two Options (Note – based on what might be acceptable to the main parties). Option One: Ethnicity Lite The […]

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ADRg Ambassadors And Mediation

Here in the latest Standpoint magazine is an article by Joshua Rozenberg about Mediation and the new, excellent strategic dispute resolution service offered by ADRg Ambassadors. Alas the most interesting sections of the article about ADRg Ambassadors are not included in the online version. So to read them you’ll have […]

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Crawford Independent: More on Ejup Ganic and Bosnian-ness

Back from Brussels. Here is a short article by me in the Independent today about Ejup Ganic. It’s always a pleasure to get material into a British national newspaper – work published there pops up all over the planet. But the end product is not necessarily what was sent in. In […]

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Great Power, Diminished Responsibility

And here I am over at Business and Politics, ingeniously linking the always interesting subject of Ambassadorial entertainment expenses to Human Rights: Lurking at the back of an Ambassador’s mind is a new concern: “What happens if I entertain that senior foreign colleague but a truculent Management Officer questions the […]

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That Unconstitutional Bosnia Constitution: Electing (Or Not) The BH Presidency

Republika Srpska’s leader Milorad Dodik has come up with a crafty way of dealing with the fact that the ethnic-territorial definition of the three-person BH Presidency has been proclaimed to be an abuse of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He proposes a simple change. […]

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