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Britain’s Defence Committee Advises Plans for Peacekeepers after IFOR
LONDON, June 11 (Reuters) - Britain should draw up plans now for participation in a new international peace-keeping force in Bosnia once the current year-long NATO mission ends in December, parliament's Defence Committee said on Tuesday. The all-party committee said in a report that the rival factions in the former Yugoslav republic could return to war if the 60,000-strong NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) pulled out before a lasting peace had been established.
But the members of parliament said Britain, which has 10,500 troops in Bosnia, should take part in any follow-on force only if it continued under NATO rather than UN command and if the United States remained "substantially involved."
"On the basis of what we have seen in Bosnia, we doubt whether the country will be able to live in peace if all multi-national peace-keeping forces are withdrawn by early 1997," the MPs said. "If British units are to play any part in a further multi-national peace-keeping force in Bosnia, the decision to prepare them for that role will have to be taken soon," their report added.
It said no decision on the date for the final withdrawal of IFOR should be taken until the security situation can be assessed after elections due to be held by September 14 as part of peace accords initialled in Dayton, Ohio, last November.
Foreign ministers will take stock of the prospects for elections, which aim to provide Bosnia with democratic institutions in which Muslims, Croats and Serbs will cooperate, at a Dayton mid-term review conference in Florence on Thursday.
"While not calling for an open-ended commitment, we believe that the countries participating in IFOR should maintain a substantial peacekeeping force in Bosnia until more significant progress has been made in implementing the civil side of the Dayton peace agreement," the MPs said. They also expressed concern that the British army was being so stretched by its mission in Bosnia that it would be unable to undertake another simultaneous operation.
"We conclude that in the wide range of post-Cold War scenarios in which the armed forces might be needed, either a prolonged peace-keeping mission like IFOR is too large a task or the army is too small," the MPs said. |
Berserkistan, June 11 · NATO’s Michael Walker Sees Extended Bosnia Mission
Berserkistan, June 5 · Perry Considers Extended NATO Role in Bosnia
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