In the aftermath of Kosovo's declaration of independence, the United States and Europe are faced with handling the transition. Why was the United States so quick to accept Kosovo as an independent state? With Serbia and Russia still refusing to accept Kosovo as a legitimate state, what kind of future tensions are likely? What steps should the U.S. and Europe take to mitigate the consequences? To discuss these questions and more, please join Daniel Serwer, Vice President of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the United States Institute of Peace and former U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator to the Bosnian Federation, to discuss the future of the Balkans with Kosovo as an independent state.

To attend, please register by responding events@ypfp.org with your name and affiliation.

Daniel P. Serwer is vice president of the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations and the Centers of Innovation. He coordinates the Institute's efforts in societies emerging from conflict, especially Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq, and Sudan. He also leads the Institute's innovative programs in rule of law, religion and peacemaking, economics of peace and conflict, media and conflict, and diaspora contributions to peace and conflict. Serwer speaks Italian, French, and Portuguese.

Serwer has worked on preventing interethnic and interreligious conflict in Iraq, and he has been deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue between Serbs and Albanians. He came to the Institute as a senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998–1999. Before that he was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six performance awards. As State Department director of European and Canadian analysis in 1996–1997, he supervised the analysts who tracked Bosnia and Dayton implementation as well as the deterioration of the security situation in Albania and Kosovo.

Serwer served from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy chief of mission and chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War.