Ambassador William G. Walker Former Head of the Kosovo Verification Mission
Kosovo and the Balkans: The Future of South-Central Europe
An Address by Ambassador William G. Walker Former Head of the Kosovo Verification Mission
A thirty-eight year veteran of the Foreign Service, Ambassador Walker has served mostly in Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, and on the Argentine desk in Washington. From 1985-88, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs responsible for Central America and Panama. From 1988-92 he served as Ambassador to El Salvador. From 1994-97, he was the Vice President of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
In August 1997, Ambassador Walker was named Special Representative of the Secretary General, heading the United Nations Transitional Administration in Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES), Croatia. The mission he commanded consisted of some 800 UN civilian and 2500 military peacekeepers and administrators.
From October 1998 through June 1999, Ambassador Walker was Head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, some 1400 international and 1500 local staff, in a peacekeeping effort mounted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), under the terms of the Holbrooke-Milosevic Agreement of October 15, 1999. |