http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=390179§ion=newsSARAJEVO (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, who led the Balkan country through a turbulent decade of war and peace in the 1990s, has died in Sarajevo, his party and doctors say. He was 78.
Doctors said Izetbegovic died on Sunday from chronic heart disease and complications after he fell at home last month and broke four ribs. He was admitted to hospital on September 10 and later transferred to a cardiological ward as his condition worsened.
"He was in a real sense the father of his people," said Paddy Ashdown, the West's top peace envoy in Bosnia. "Without him I doubt if Bosnia and Herzegovina would exist today."
Izetbegovic was the last to leave office of the three rival Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Muslim leaders who signed the U.S.-sponsored Dayton peace treaty that ended the 1992-95 war -- Europe's worst conflict since World War Two.
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