No Early Draw-Down Seen,
France Re-Enters the FoldBy Jonathan Clayton
BRUSSELS, April 23 (Reuters) — NATO's top generals agreed on Tuesday there should be no reduction of the 60,000-strong peace mission in Bosnia until after elections in late summer, U.S. General John Shalikashvili said. "We have recommended that no troop reductions be made in order to provide the secure climate that will be needed for the election," Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, told reporters after a meeting in Brussels. The meeting, attended by France's military chief General Jean-Philippe Douin, reviewed the work of NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR) in monitoring the Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia's war.
"We all calculated that we had accomplished more than we had expected to accomplish in the first four months," Shalikashvili said, adding that "draw-down" would not start before elections which should be held by mid-September at the latest under the Dayton accord. Originally, NATO's military planners said they would begin reducing the force — NATO's largest-ever commitment — six months after it took up position at the end of last December. The planners said that timetable would allow NATO countries to meet pledges to bring out all IFOR forces by the end of this year.
Shalikashvili said the generals had not discussed any post-IFOR scenarios — an issue increasingly seen as critical if confidence in the peace process is to be maintained and a resumption of hostilities prevented. Shalikashvili said the force would be prepared to assist in other non-military tasks, such as helping refugees return and monitoring election preparatons, as its primary objective of creating a secure climate was achieved. He said he was not worried about "mission creep" — the fraying of the guidelines of a force's mandate — as IFOR's primary responsibilities were not being changed and would always come first.
Shortly before IFOR was launched, France, which left NATO's military structure in 1966 in protest at perceived U.S. dominance, announced it was moving closer back to the alliance's military wing. Douin, the first French military head to attend a routine meeting of NATO's military committee for 30 years, said his country would be prepared to participate fully in a "new military structure." France is linking its participation to a reform of NATO's military wing. "The notion of an integrated military structure nolonger exists... from now on, we speak of a new structure or of a future structure," Douin told reporters.
NATO has undertaken to overhaul its command structure in the light of post-Cold War European security concerns and as a prelude to proposed expansion eastwards to take in new members from former communist countries. Shalikashvili, describing Douin's presence at the meeting as a "very historic moment," admitted NATO reform was now high on the agenda, but declined to give any details of possible changes. "Clearly there are provisions we wish to make as the French government takes steps to come back into the alliance," he said.
He added there were already several European faces in the alliance's military structures, but said it would be good to see some French ones now appearing alongside.
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