It was evening in Sarajevo, and a warm glow lit up the second-floor windows of the private home of a United Nations official. U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter W. Galbraith '73 sat across the table from Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic and prepared for a tense dinner of diplomatic discussions.

But sudden gunfire between Muslims and Serbs 30 yards from their table brought the elegant courses to a rapid halt. Bullets whizzed past the window as Galbraith and Silajdzic fled the area in an armored land rover.

As U.S. ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998 during much of the former Yugoslavia's civil war, Galbraith says he had many close encounters with death--both his own and those of others.

When Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's plane crashed into a foggy hillside in Croatia, Galbraith was one of the first to witness the strewn corpses, a scene that greatly disturbed him.

More importantly, however, this scene and other aspects of life amid the destruction of war only renewed Galbraith's commitment to hope and respect for human life on all sides.

"I believe we're all passengers on the planet," Galbraith says from his temporary home in Norway. "What happened in Bosnia and Croatia does affect us all. The U.S. acted out of concern for our fellow human beings and because it's the right thing to do."

Lisa L. Tepper, Croatia country director for the State Department, praises Galbraith's commitment to the mission. "He has an extraordinary degree of personal dedication and sense of human rights and democracy that translated into inspiration for the whole mission."

Galbraith was the only person on both sides to participate in all three peace agreements: the Washington Accord, signed on February 28, 1994, to create a cease-fire between the Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia; the Erdut Accord, signed on November 12, 1995, aimed to end the war in Croatia, and the Dayton Accord, signed on November 21, 1995 to end the war in Bosnia.

Galbraith played a lead role in negotiating the Washington Accord, wrote the Erdut Accord and supported Richard Holbrooke in brokering the Dayton Accord.

During negotiations, Galbraith says he faced some of the toughest personalities in history, including the "Franco-like" Croatian president, Farfranjo Tudjman.

"I know I spent more time with Tudjman than everyone else combined," Galbraith says. "He's a very rigid personality with a sense of his own place. He was convinced that Bosnia should not exist as a country. He showed extreme racism against Bosnian Muslims."

Meetings took place atop a hill in Zagreb, in a room Tito, the former-Yugoslavia's communist-era leader, used as a living room more than 40 years ago.

Galbraith says he always sat to Tudjman's left on a white, gilded couch, while Tudjman lounged in a gilded armchair. Meetings were often intense, and voices quickly rose.

"He would sometimes yell," Galbraith recalls. "I was never intimidated. I'd yell back."

But he says dealing with Tudjman was not difficult once he devised a strategy.