Retired U.S. Army Major General William B. Nash, a popular former IOP fellow, will head up the United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping effort in the volatile Kosovo city of Mitrovica, officials confirmed yesterday.

Nash will be the sixth U.N. appointee to administer the city since the international organization took control after last summer's 78-day NATO bombing campaign.

Nash's appointment has not yet been officially announced by the U.N., though official word is expected within the next few days.

Nash has extensive experience quelling the recent troubles in former Yugoslavia. He commanded the multinational military force that implemented the Dayton Peace Accords in northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina before retiring from the military in 1998.

After serving as an IOP fellow in the spring of 1998, Nash served as director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), a non-profit foreign policy think tank.

There, Nash designed command structures for the U.N. and NATO peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, according to Brian R. Smith '02, who worked with Nash at the NDI last summer.

Early this year, state department officials began to consider Nash for the Kosovo rebuilding job.

According to an internal NDI e-mail message sent to staff members, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard C. Holbrooke personally asked Nash to serve in Kosovo.