i'm ron brownstein and the president has introduced our distinguished panel here. let me start with an issue that the president clinton race because the title of our panel is the dayton accords and the beginning of of 21st century diplomacy but the dayton accords are not the beginning of the story in bosnia. during the last two years of the george h. w. bush presidency and the first years of the present clinton administration there was a great deal -- richard holbrooke who we have mentioned several times wrote on the first page of this memoir about dayton between 1991 in 1995 the international response to this catastrophe was at best uncertain and at worst a polling. why did it take so long for the u.s. and europe together to intervene with decisive force in bosnia? >> well i think first of all let me say, thing from listening to president clinton you all know how fabulous it was to work for him. every day it was exciting and you can see how his mind works and how dedicated he was to what he was doing and it was an honor and a pleasure to be able to work with you m

i would like to thank ron brownstein, the columnist for times."angeles " he was involved when we began to raise these issues. he had a willingness to come here and moderate a panel. let's welcome the panel and get on with the proceedings. [applause] with it this evening. [applause] >> mr. >> good morning. the president has introduced our distinguished panel. let me start with an issue that president clinton raised read the title of our panel is the dayton accords. they are not the beginning of the story in bosnia. during the last two years of the george h. w. bush administration and the first two years of president clinton's administration, there was a great deal of uncertainty about how to proceed. richard holbrooke wrote on the first pitch of his memoir about dayrton, the international response to this catastrophe was uncertain. why did it take so long for the u.s. and europe together to intervene? secretary? >> first of all, let me say that from listening to president clinton, you all know how fabulous it was to work for him. it was every day e

say a few words about what we did, but i would like to begin by placing -- the last question ron brownstein asked was relevant to what this panel is going to discuss. the last question was, was the model used to bring about the peace agreement, the work that the united states did, is it a good model for the challenges we face today since, relatively speaking, it is a more multi- polar world. again, to go back to what i said in the beginning a little bit, i was quite well aware that from the moment the berlin wall fell and the soviet union began to break up, and russia was been quite weak economically -- as i said, my very first international effort was to organize a multi-billion dollar aid package for russia. china was rising, but nowhere near the economics military capacity and has today. same with india. it had begun its economic reform only very recently, 1991. ron brown had identified, as commerce secretary, other rising countries that he believed would shape the 21st century, would create this multi-polar world in a way that we had not imagined. and we decided we had to focus on them,