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Contact Group meeting delayed by Frasure death

GENEVA: A meeting of the five-nation Contact Group on Bosnia scheduled for Tuesday to discuss new U.S. peace proposals has been postponed after the death of U.S. envoy Robert Frasure, diplomats said on Monday.

Frasure, Washington's representative on the group, and other U.S. negotiators were to have met officials from Russia, Britain, France and Germany in Geneva to brief them on the results of their shuttle diplomacy in the Balkans.

Frasure was one of three Americans who were killed when their armoured car slipped off a mountain road near Sarajevo on Saturday and fell into a ravine.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke was on Monday accompanying the three men's bodies back to Washington. Although Washington pledged to carry on with the peace drive, Holbrooke was forced to delay his next meetings in former Yugoslavia for about a week.

Contact Group diplomats say they hope Frasure's death will not change U.S. policy in the Balkans, which they consider has taken a more realistic turn in recent months. Although Frasure, 53, was not a policy-maker, his expertise was such that he had a growing influence on decisions.

The U.S. proposals, loosely based on a previous Contact Group plan rejected by Bosnian Serbs, provide for more negotiations on a land-for-peace swap but spell out more clearly than before military threats and incentives to push the warring factions into a settlement.-Reuter