Paves Way for Weapons Reductions
VIENNA, April 29 (Reuters) — Bosnia, Croatia and rump Yugoslavia are expected to finish arms control talks on schedule, paving a way for massive weapon reductions in their Balkan region, the talks' chairman said on Monday. The negotiations seek to establish quotas on the number of tanks, fighter jets and heavy artillery permitted for each of the former warring parties. The Dayton peace accord on Bosnia, signed in Paris last December, stipulated that an arms limitation deal had to be reached by June 6, 1996."I am still very confident that we will have an agreement in time which will be acceptable to all the parties," Norwegian general Vigleik Eide told reporters. Eide chairs the arms talks on behalf of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Croatia, rump Yugoslavia comprising Serbia and Montenegro, the Bosnian government, the Bosnian-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serbs are each represented in the negotiations. Although the talks were "hard and sometimes tedious" and various issues remained unresolved, Eide said he was cautiously optimistic current disagreements would not scupper the talks. The arms negotiations were scheduled to restart on May 6 for a 10-day period, followed by a break from May 16 to 22 for the parties to consult with their respective governments.
"When we meet again on May 22, we will sit together until we have the agreement initialled on June 6," Eide said. "We are still aiming for the signature at ministerial level on June 11."
One thorny issue yet to be resolved concerned the verfication procedures to ensure states stick to their side of the arms deal. "(We need) an agreement not only on... all details for an intrusive verification machine with inspections but also in a way that can be accepted in the long term by all the parties," he said.
Eide cautioned that time was scarce and the parties had to buckle down to reach an agreement by the June deadline. "Time is of a certain concern," he said. "The parties need the time to reach the best possible agreements." The chairman also underlined that the success of the talks was inextricably linked to progress in the implementation of the entire Dayton package. Other areas of discussion include security and confidence-building measures. Eide would not speculate on the consequences should negotiators fail to reach an agreement by June 6.
"But any element of Dayton that fails or experiences delays will have a negative a impact on other parts,'' he said. If the parties fail to come up with their own satisfactory formula by June 6, the Paris accord requires Belgrade to cut its arms to 75 percent of current levels, the so-called "baseline" level. Croatia and Bosnia would each be allocated 30 percent of the baseline.
According to the OSCE, the current draft texts of a possible arms reduction agreement are closely modelled after the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE). The former Yugoslav federation was not a party to the Europe-wide CFE arms limitation pact forged just months before the country disintegrated into war in 1991.
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