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NATO: World Has Responsibility to Prevent Another Bosnian War
By Carol Giacomo
"I think we have a responsibility that war does not resume again. I'm sure that the international community will ...
prevent that from happening," he told a breakfast meeting with reporters.
President Clinton has said that the IFOR mission -- which includes 20,000 American soldiers among a total of 60,000 troops -- will be finished by year's end. He is under election-year pressure at home to stick to that pledge. However, officials have not ruled out a follow-on force and in fact Defense Secretary William Perry said earlier this month he would recommend the United States continue to maintain ground troops in Bosnia after December if NATO determines the peace cannot hold.
The predominant U.S. line has been to insist that such views are premature until closer to the deadline.
Solana declined to specify military options for any follow-up mission, arguing that serious consideration and decision-making will not take place until the October-December period, after the Bosnian elections due on September 14. But he stressed that if an IFOR follow-on operation is needed, "that will be a different mission than the mission that will end with the year."
Solana spoke of the need "to maintain a strong deterrent capacity after the end of the year." He declined to cite how many troops might be involved but said before the end of the year there will be a rotation of troops to bring in more engineers and move out more heavily armored units.
Solana was speaking a day after he met in Washington with key officials, including Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Defense Secretary Perry.
A State Department spokesman acknowledged that the IFOR follow-on force issue was discussed by Christopher and Solana on Monday. But he said U.S. officials insisted "IFOR's mission will end on December 20 ... and we're simply not at a stage where ... we're going to discuss what kind of international presence there might be in Bosnia down the road."
On a related matter, Solana insisted that NATO in the past two weeks has significantly expanded its patrols around the Pale stronghold of the two key Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who have been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal. He was responding to a Washington Post story Tuesday which said NATO has only slightly increased its presence in Pale despite Christopher's tough talk about "turning up the heat" on Karadzic and Mladic by expanding IFOR patrols.
"The latest figures I have from the day before yesterday of the increased patroling in Pale is very significant ... (There has been) a significant change in the last two weeks ... and it will continue like that," Solana said.
An aide said there were 100 different instances of NATO presence in Pale in a one-week period, including helicopter and airplane overflights. He and Solana suggested the Post story was based on reporting before patrols were beefed up. Christopher announced the expanded, more aggressive NATO patrols three weeks ago to counter criticism that the alliance was not doing enough to arrest Karadzic and Mladic, whose continued influence is seen as undermining Bosnia's elections.
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Berserkistan, June 21 · NATO Commander: Elections, Then Talk of Extended Mission
Berserkistan, June 15 · NATO’s Solana Urges Bosnia to Make Most of Elections
Berserkistan, June 14 · NATO Delays Decision on Bosnia Extention until September
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