How the Bosnian war ended

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

The Dayton Peace Accords were signed on the 21 November 1995, ending the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia.

The war was part of the break-up of Yugoslavia; it is estimated that 100,000 people were killed.

In 2010, Lucy Williamson spoke to Milan Milutinović who was one of the leading negotiators for the Serbian delegation about the final 24 hours of negotiations.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia (left), President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia sign the Dayton Agreement. Credit: Paul J Richards/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:06.0	Hello and welcome to witness history from the BBC World Service. We're the podcast that brings history to life in just nine minutes through incredible archive alongside the memories of one key witness.
0:23.7	So if you want more, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:29.3	And now we're going back 30 years to the American city of Dayton, Ohio, where peace talks
0:35.4	designed to end fighting in the former Yugoslavia are underway.
0:40.1	And a deal needs to be done. Lucy Williamson takes a look at the final 24 hours of intense
0:46.7	negotiations from inside the Serbian delegation. It's November 1995, Wright-Patterson Air Base, Dayton, Ohio. For three weeks,
0:57.3	delegations from the war-torn regions of former Yugoslavia, Bosnian, Croatian and Serb, have been
1:02.7	trying to agree a peace deal under the fiery mediation of American negotiator Richard Holbrook.
1:08.4	The end of the conference is approaching, an outline deal is on the table.
1:13.2	As the clock moves towards 2am, someone is stirring inside the airbase.
1:19.1	The Americans came to me and said, please, would you be so kind to wake up, Mr Miloshavich,
1:25.8	everything is failed. There is no chance that Bosnians is going to
1:32.0	sign. Milan Milotinovich was then the Yugoslav foreign minister, his boss, Mr. Milosevic, the
1:38.4	Serbian president. The Americans occupied a strange position, leading the negotiations and militarily involved in the conflict.
1:46.8	But weeks of living and negotiating side by side had led to a complex set of personal relationships.
1:53.0	During such long negotiations and before that months and month of work, we know each other as the friends, so to say. And for us,
2:06.3	it was really touching. You say they came to you and said, please wake up, Mr. Milosevic,
2:12.0	it's failed. Is that what you did? Not immediately.
2:25.2	That was at the 2 o'clock and I consult Mr. Bulatovich, who was president of Montenegro in that time.
2:26.7	And he said to me, oh, why to call here, wake him up?
2:30.9	You will say him tomorrow.
	...

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