Hans van den Broek Proposes Successor to IFOR
BRUSSELS, May 3 (Reuters) — European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek has proposed that Europe should piece together a military force to take over in Bosnia next year after the NATO-led IFOR peacekeeping mission's mandate ends. "Without a military presence after the end of 1996, the civilian reconstruction of Bosnia will be threatened," the Commissioner's spokesman told reporters on Friday."Hans van den Broek wants to open a study to see what the European Union can do in coordination with NATO," he added. However, the spokesman stressed that this was van den Broek's personal view — not yet that of the European Commission.
It also flies in the face of the assessment of the European Union's fledgling defence arm, the Western European Union, that the bloc has not got the necessary command structures, political will or money to undertake such an operation even using NATO hardware.
In the knowledge that the U.S. Congress would not allow U.S. troops to take part in IFOR unless the mission was strictly time-limited, the force was given a one-year mandate from last December. But that timetable has already started to slip.
The IFOR drawdown was to have begun in July, but it has been decided to delay it until after elections in Bosnia due to take place in September. For logistical reasons alone, this means that IFOR troops will still be in the country into early 1997.
Van den Broek's suggestion is also not likely to be well received by EU nations, led by France and Germany, which have always said they would pull their troops out of Bosnia at the same time as the United Stnsive care," van den Broek told U.S. authorities on a visit to Washington this week, Commission sources said.
Military sources speculated on Friday that van den Broek's proposal, rather than being taken at face value, might be better seen as a way of adding to the pressure on NATO — and particularly the United States — to agree to a continued presence in Bosnia well into next year.
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