In Candid Interview, the Secretary of Defense
Weighs U.S. Involvement Against War in Bosnia
(WASHINGTON, April 4—Reuters) Defense Secretary William Perry, who has now lost two close friends in the former Yugoslavia, said Thursday that American lives and high U.S. military costs were a worthy price for peace in Bosnia. "I believe our security interests are worth risks,'' he said of the deaths of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in a plane crash Wednesday near Dubrovnik, Croatia, and of Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Joe Cruzel in a road accident near Sarajevo last year.
Hostile Fire on Brown's Plane Unlikely
Brown and a delegation of U.S. business executives were on the Air Force T-43A, the military version of the Boeing 737, when it crashed Wednesday into a hillside while on an instrument approach to Dubrovnik airport in Croatia. Perry, speaking to reporters on his aircraft flying home to Washington from Cairo, said the Brown crash during foul weather appeared to be an accident caused by faulty instruments and he virtually ruled out ground fire. "Where the plane was coming in there are no known forces in that area that would be hostile to U.S. planes,'' he said. "Secondly, even more directly, you cannot direct ground fire against an airplane if you can't see it. "The visibility was so terrible that directing small arms fire or directing a shoulder-fired rocket at the airplane would have been almost impossible."'I believe our security interests are worth the risk'
Many Congressional opponents of the presence of 20,000 U.S. troops in Bosnia in a NATO-led peace implementation force (IFOR) have charged that Bosnia is not worth the expense or the loss of a single American life. Perry, who flew into Bosnia last weekend on the same plane that crashed and killed Brown, disagreed. Calling Brown "a good friend, a very warm, caring person, a man of boundless energy," Perry said both Brown and Cruzel believed strongly in U.S. efforts to bring about peaceful change in Russia and Bosnia."I believe the very strong objective argument can be made that security and stability in Europe could be very adversely affected by the war in Bosnia. And security and stability in Bosnia is of primary interest to United States security," Perry told reporters. "The risk of accidents, the risk of individuals or gangs attacking or harassing troops—those risks have been there from the beginning and will be there as long as we're there. I believe our security interests are worth risks," he said.
Discounts U.S. Role in 'IFOR-2'
"I also can tell you with very great confidence that is the same answser that Joe Cruzel would have given." But Perry insisted that U.S. troops would be out of Bosnia by the end of the year as promised by the Clinton administration and said American forces were highly unlikely to take part in any "IFOR-2" that NATO or other nations might keep in Bosnia beyond year's end. "If they had an IFOR-2, we would certainly participate in terms of the leadership in command and control and in logistics support that we always give NATO operations. But I do not expect that we will participate with ground troops," he said.
William Perry Biography
Office of the Secretary of Defense
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