Only Half of Offiers Needed Have Been Found
(UNITED NATIONS, March 25—Reuters) More than three months after it began recruiting an international police force for Bosnia, the United Nations has only half the officers it needs. In a report to the Security Council over the weekend, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said the delay was due to difficulty among member states in releasing policemen swiftly from active duty—as well as sending unqualified personnel. U.N. officials say about 10 percent were rejected because they failed a driving test or had a poor command of English—the working language of the force."Precious time has been lost when deployment was urgently required, and the search for suitable replacements has caused further delay in the full deployment of the International Police Talks Force (IPTF)," he said, "In some cases, the majority of a contingent has failed in one or more tests, with the result that a large number of prospective monitors has had to be repatriated at the expense of the government concerned," he added.
The civilian police force is well below its authorized strength of 1,721, with 712 deployed in March. The remainder are expected but by no means guaranteed by the end of April. For most countries police are in active service whereas troops are kept in reserve and can be more easily released.
Virginia Firm Hiring Officers in U.S.
The United States, which had promised to send 200 police, has only sent 33 so far, with some 50 more expected next month. Since there is no national U.S. police force, the recruitment is more difficult and a private company, DynCorp of Reston, Virgina, has been hired to find the policemen. In one ad in the New York Times in February, DynCorp said civilian police personnel were needed for "contract services" to the U.S. government in Bosnia. Applicants, who it said needed a "clean background," would be screened for drugs and could expect a competitive salary "plus bonus potential."Under the peace accords reached in Dayton Ohio, last November, a NATO-led international force replaced U.N. peacekeepers to separate the warring parties in Bosnia. The United Nations was assigned an international police force to help train, advise and monitor local police. It also was assigned to field troops in the Eastern Slavonia area, a part of Croatia controlled by Serbs, where in comparison to police, recruitment has been easier. About half of the 5,000 troops needed are in place from Belgium, Russian and Slovakia with battalions from Jordan and Pakistan and a reconnaisance unit from Argentina expected next month.
NATO Says Police Would Have Spared Suburbs
Some NATO officers and diplomats have suggested that an effective U.N. police force would have guaranteed the safety of Serbs in around Sarajevo who fled when the suburbs were handed over to Muslim control earlier this month. Apparently stung by such criticism, the report drew attention to the mandate of the force under the Dayton accords. "It is not feasible to assign to this unarmed force the task of enforcing law and order in a country awash with weapons, all the more so when it has no legal authority to do so," it said.Boutros-Ghali also said the Bosnian Serbs were pressured by their leaders, and then by gangs, to leave Sarajevo suburbs while the Bosnian government did little to encourage them to stay or protect those who did not leave. Efforts by the U.N. police force to reassure the population, he said, "failed, however, as over 90 percent of the Bosnian Serbs left in a planned but poorly organised exodus."
DynCorp Headquarters, Reston, Virginia
U.S. Police to Patrol Croatia March 3, 1996
Berserkistan is the world news service of
Pacific Interactive Media Corp.
EMail Berserkistan
©1995-1996, All Rights Reserved
