Going to Take More Time
Says NATO Commander
By Jude WebberROME, April 19 (Reuters) — The NATO commander of the multinational force in Bosnia said on Friday that a withdrawal by the republic's armies to barracks under the Dayton peace plan was progressing well but was not yet complete. "We are very happy with what we see in terms of the progress towards completion and we will continue to observe very closely as we watch them move towards achieving this very difficult goal," U.S. Admiral Leighton Smith told a news conference.
Under the terms of the Dayton peace accord, which ended the 43-month war in Bosnia, the country's armies of some 300,000 men had until midnight on Thursday to return to barracks and place their heavy weapons in NATO-approved storage sites. That deadline fell 120 days after the NATO-led peace implementation force (IFOR) began its one-year mandate on December 20.
"I cannot report to you it (withdrawal) is complete," Smith said. "What we see is clear intent to comply with "D+120'." He added: "We are very pleased with where we are going. It will take more time." Smith said he did not yet know when or if IFOR would itself begin to leave Bosnia. "I don't know when drawdown will start. Nor do I know at this point whether the drawdown will be geared to the elections, December 20 or something else," he said.
Under the Dayton accords, elections are due to be held by September. Smith said he hoped they would begin in August. He said one possibility was to "reshape" the 60,000-strong IFOR, maintaining robustness to deal with infractions of the Dayton accords while making IFOR lighter and more mobile. "If it (reshaping) occurs I would expect it to occur over the next five to six months just because that's when troops rotate out... But that's up to the nations as to whether or not they are willing to change the complexion of the force."
Smith, who had earlier briefed 100 officers and diplomats at a training school in Rome on the first four months of IFOR's mission, said there were still many challenges ahead. "We have seen the military side, which was pretty much the clear and present danger, pretty much taken care of in 120 days with the intent to maintain this environment which is what I call an absence of war," he said. "But we still have many tough, tough obstacles in front of us before there's a lasting peace."
Smith said such hurdles included the emotive issues of resettlement of displaced persons and guaranteeing freedom of movement for the election.
Asked by a member of the audience about Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic, who have both been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague but are still at large, Smith said: "I find it offensive for people to say IFOR forces are reluctant to detain them. "My personal view is that the persons who signed up to the agreement ought to take the actions they promised to take — to hand them over to the war crimes tribunal."
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