U.S. denies Dachchiqi: Holbrooke são has signed no documents against Kosovo independence

The US State Department rejected Serbian claims that US diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote to Milosevic, promising that Washington will not recognise Kosovo's independence.

The US State Department has denied Serbia's claims regarding a letter by diplomat Richard Holbrooke allegedly writing to former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1998/9, engaging that the United States “will never recognise Kosovo”.

This is just not true. There is no such letter”, wrote the US State Department in an email for BIRN.

Ivica Dacic, Serbian Foreign Minister, told the Serbian newspaper “Srpski Telegraf” on 15 August that while Holbrooke sent a letter promising that the United States “will never recognise Kosovo”, the letter later disappeared and was stolen.

He was quoted as saying that Milosevic's secretary “is sworn to have summoned and given a letter signed by the then chief negotiator between the West and Serbia, Holbrooke, where she said America would never recognise Kosovo”, Dacic said. He accused opposition parties in Serbia of stealing the document.

In response to BIRN, the US State Department stressed that Kosovo's status as an independent state was clear in the eyes of the US. The United States and more than 100 other countries recognise Kosovo”, the UN said.

Kosovo and Serbia should focus on the future. They should double efforts to work through EU-led dialogue talks on normalising relations, which would benefit stability and security in the region and help progress the two countries' accession to the EU”, the State Department writes.

Dacic also added that no state institution is in possession of the original draft of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia.

The State Department also rejected this, saying the Dayton Agreement is public.

On August 17th, Srpski Telegraf announced through a news report that Serbian police had launched an investigation into missing documents. However, B IRN couldn't independently verify this news.

Holbrooke died in 2010. Along with Sweden's Carl Bildt, he brokered the agreement that led to the end of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the war ended, President Bill Clinton named him his special envoy in the Balkans, where he led talks aimed at resolving the war in Kosovo. In 1999, he travelled to Belgrade to hand over Milosevic's final West ultimatum before the start of NATO's attack, which ended Serbian rule in Kosovo.