Within days of meeting Zimmermann, Izetbegović withdrew his signature and renounced the peace plan he agreed to in Lisbon, suddenly declaring his opposition to any type of ethnic division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within weeks a full blown war developed. Three and a half years later, the Dayton Accord that all three sides accepted in November 1995 thus ending the war, featured a very similar canton system, dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina internally along ethnic lines. Writing in 1997, Alfred Sherman, British political analyst and an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, described Zimmermann's involvement in Bosnia, along with American overall foreign policy in the Balkans, as: "lying and cheating, fomenting war in which civilians are the main casualty, and in which ancient hatreds feed on themselves".