Holbrooke said this was a very bad moment for anyone to play with institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I have asked Christian Schwarz-Schilling not to allow the closure of the OHR, not even a discussion about it, before we see how the Kosovo issue is resolved, Holbrooke said.
Commenting on debates on possible constitutional changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Holbrooke said he did not believe a completely new constitution could be written at the moment because the country's institutions were still not strong enough.
A new constitution can be written when Radovan Karadzic is brought to justice, the former US diplomat said.
He reiterated his earlier statement that the greatest post-Dayton mistake was failure to arrest Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic and his chief military commander Ratko Mladic, insisting this could have been done without any great difficulty in 1996.
Holbrooke again blamed this failure on US Admiral Leighton Smith, the commander of the international peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.
We should have exerted greater pressure on Smith. It was a disastrous mistake, he said.