William Walker (diplomat)

In August 1997, Walker was named as a Special Representative of the Secretary General and was appointed to head the United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES). He led a mission consisting of some 800 UN civilian and 2,500 military peacekeepers and administrators. The mission was responsible for overseeing the peaceful reintegration of this Serb-controlled region of eastern Slavonia into Croatia following the end of the Croatian War.

Walker was subsequently appointed to head the Kosovo Verification Mission, leading some 1400 international and 1500 local staff between October 1998 and June 1999 along with British Major General John Drewienkiewicz, Walker's military adviser.[2] This was a peacekeeping mission mounted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the ongoing violence in Kosovo. In 1999, following the Račak massacre, Walker was putting pressure on forensic experts headed by Finnish pathologist Helena Ranta to name the perpetrators of the massacre (Serbian security forces), thus way wanting to give justification to the international community for the later NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. On January 18, 1999, the FR Yugoslavia government made him persona non grata. A week later, on the intervention by European Council and Russian Federation, Prime Minister of FR Yugoslavia Momir Bulatović froze the decision.[3] The mission was discontinued following the end of the Kosovo War in June 1999.

On November 24, 2008, he became honorary citizen of Republic of Albania, the title given by President Bamir Topi.[4] On January 15, 2009, on the 10th anniversary of the Račak massacre, he was awarded the Golden Medal of Freedom by the President and Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo.