Paddy Ashdown Quotes

My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.

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A very small bunch of corrupt politicians believe that allowing Radovan Karadzic to stay at liberty is more important than this country having a future in NATO and peace for its citizens.

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Bosnia now stands at the gates of Europe, ... This is a truly remarkable achievement for a country as war-torn as Bosnia and Herzegovina was just 10 years ago.

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I shall go home now. You have to know when your time is up. I knew that with the Liberal Democrats, and I know that now, in Bosnia.

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We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.

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Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.

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It works both ways there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them.

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I love this country, I love these people, though I can't say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold.

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I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

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Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

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I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals' broad agreement with what I do.

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I don't think there is anyone who knows Bosnia-Herzegovina better than him. He is deeply trusted in the country. The international mission is in save hands.

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People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt.

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I am absolutely delighted that the international community has chosen Schwarz-Schilling to be my successor. He knows this country, he loves this country... and I cannot think of nobody better to take on this job.

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The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

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My first job has been to do the best thing for the Bosnian people. Not for the Serbs, the Bosniaks or Croats, but the people as a whole.

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I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.

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I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

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We are not there yet, but I'd be disappointed if in two years' time there was not some movement towards truth as a precursor to reconciliation.

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This country is about history, and unless the Serbs in particular come to some understanding of this history, we cannot build a stable state.

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We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.

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I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that No.

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Ten years after Dayton, that these two primary architects of these appalling crimes should still be free is a failure on all sides.

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Politics is compromise.

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The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s

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