World pays tribute to US diplomat Richard Holbrooke
Mr Holbrooke was meeting Hillary Clinton in Washington on Friday when he collapsed
President Barack Obama has led tributes to the work of the US diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, who died following heart surgery on Monday at the age of 69.
Mr Obama called him a "true giant of American foreign policy".
Mr Holbrooke helped broker the 1995 Dayton agreement that ended the Bosnian war. More recently, he was US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari said they were saddened by his death.
But the Taliban said he had failed to survive the pressure of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan.
Nicknamed the Bulldozer for his muscular style, Mr Holbrooke once said he had no qualms about "negotiating with people who do immoral things", if it served efforts for peace.
'Legendary determination'
Some of the strongest praise for the veteran diplomat came from Europe, where he played a lead role in ending the conflict in Bosnia.
Mr Holbrooke was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace accords
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Mr Holbrooke's "force of personality and his negotiating skill combined to drive through the Dayton peace agreement and put a halt to the fighting" in the former Yugoslav republic.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who served as an envoy to Bosnia in the early 1990s, described Mr Holbrooke as "truly a giant among diplomats of our time", and "one of the best and the brightest".
The EU's foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, said he was a "champion of peace and reconciliation".
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also paid tribute to his "diplomatic skills, strategic vision and legendary determination."
"He knew that history is unpredictable; that we sometimes have to defend our security by facing conflicts in distant places," he said.
Even Mr Holbrooke's main opponent in the war in Bosnia, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, expressed his "sadness and regret".
Mr Karadzic, who is on trial for war crimes at The Hague, issued a statement saying he had been hoping to call him as a witness.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11990491
The passing of a statesman.
The passing of a statesman.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”