Dubbed the "Kissinger of the Balkans", Holbrooke, 64, is the embodiment of muscular diplomacy and his crowning achievement was brokering the Bosnia peace deal, the 10th anniversay of which is being celebrated this month.

Born April 24, 1941 in New York, Holbrooke began his diplomatic career at the tender age of 21 in Vietnam, thanks to his knowledge of the local language.

He then quickly moved up the ladder and was assigned to the White House in 1966 to work on Vietnam issues under President Lyndon Johnson. Throughout the 1970s he pursued diplomatic studies at Princeton University, and served as a Peace Corps director in Morocco.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at age 35.

Holbrooke was little known outside specialist circles until July 1994 when he was named assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs with special responsibility for Balkans policy, and waded into the Yugoslav conflict.

His no-holds-barred negotiating, which insiders said reflected an abrasive nature honed by years of experience at the poker table, saw him shuttling back and forth between rival capitals in the former Yugoslavia, alternately browbeating and cajoling, until the three-and-a-half year conflict ground to a halt.

He patched together a peace deal that has held the shaky Bosnian republic together despite the tensions pulling its component communities apart.

However Holbrooke's spiky personality has not always endeared him to his colleagues. His blunt approach caused him problems in president Bill Clinton's inner circle, notably with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

He has been described as egotistical, arrogant and at times a bully, qualities which on the face of it qualified him admirably for an eyeball confrontation with former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

In parallel Holbrooke has conducted a distinguished career in the private sector.

During the 1980s Holbrooke earned more than one million dollars a year at the Lehman Brothers brokerage house and served at Credit Suisse First Boston as vice chairman of the US unit, even as he continued to serve as consultant to the White House and the State Department, returning on various occasions after leaving diplomacy to aid in talks in Bosnia.

His links with the Swiss bank were the source of difficulties in Congress where the Senate first blocked his appointment in 1999 as ambassador to the UN over alleged misuse of influence.

The nomination was stalled for more than a year as Holbrooke faced a federal ethics probe.

But while senators wrangled with his confirmation, Holbrooke continued to work in the Balkans, though his bid to settle the conflict in Kosovo and avoid the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia failed.

His name nowadays is still mentioned in Washington circles as a potential successor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the event the Democracts win the presidential elections in 2008.

Holbrooke, who has two boys, in 1994 married his third wife, Kati Marton, a former journalist who was married to the veteran television anchor Peter Jennings.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.