Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 30, 1995 TAG: 9511300068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM LENGTH: Medium
The ``enabling force'' of 2,600, including 700 Americans, will begin setting up headquarters, communications and supply bases, and check airports and other transportation facilities.
The main force will not arrive until after the peace agreement initialed in Dayton, Ohio, is signed in Paris Dec. 14, but the advance units could begin heading into Bosnia in the next few days.
Gen. George Joulwan, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, wants the bulk of the 60,000 troops in place within 30 days of the signing. Of those, about 20,000 will be American, 13,000 British, and 10,000 French.
The force also will include about 1,500 Russians, under an agreement reached Tuesday by U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev.
The NATO force in Bosnia, unlike the existing U.N. force, will be heavily armed to deal with any threat to its safety. They will have the right to shoot first when necessary, officials say.
One NATO official said on condition of anonymity that the first instance in which force is used will be a key moment, and that a show of weakness could mean trouble for the mission.
The North Atlantic Council, NATO's top policymaking body, will give the troop movement go-ahead at a special meeting today. The council then will begin scrutinizing Joulwan's operations plan. Approval of the plan is expected Friday, Perry said.
President Clinton will be briefed on that plan over the weekend in Germany.
Perry stressed the importance of the disarmament if real peace is to be achieved in Bosnia. A conference on how to put disarmament into effect will be held in Bonn, Germany, shortly after the Paris conference.
``I believe that the imbalance of arms ... was a significant factor when this war started four years ago,'' the defense secretary said. He added that if the imbalance isn't corrected in the next six months, the United States may furnish arms to the Bosnian government forces.
British Defense Minister Michael Portillo, however, said he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
``The last thing we want to see is an arms race,'' he said.
All NATO members except Iceland, which does not have an army, will contribute to the Bosnia Implementation Force, known as IFOR.
The United States hopes to pull some of its forces out of Bosnia before the one-year peacekeeping mission is up, the top Air Force general said Wednesday.
Gen. Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force chief of staff, said the military is planning to withdraw them gradually as it becomes clear that the warring parties are abiding by the peace accord.
``Clearly, the greatest concern that everyone has ... is that the exit strategy is at this point a little less well-defined than perhaps the military task,'' Fogleman told reporters.
``What we really envision is we'll go in, we'll peak at a given strength, and then hopefully we won't wait until the one-year point and then everybody packs up on the 365th day,'' Fogleman said. ``We will start pulling forces out as we see that we do not need them.''
Also Wednesday:
Senior allied officials said the NATO-led force won't hunt down suspected war criminals but hand over any it encounters to the international tribunal.
``It is not in the mandate of IFOR to pursue war criminals,'' said Silvio Balanzino, acting NATO secretary-general.
On the other hand, he said, IFOR troops could not ignore war criminals if they ran across them.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has warned international troops would be killed if they tried to arrest him or other Serb leaders indicted for crimes against humanity by the international tribunal in The Hague.
Up to 5,500 civilians are still missing from Srebrenica four months after Bosnian Serbs overran the Muslim enclave, the United Nations said.
A report to the U.N. Security Council by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called the takeover of Srebrenica one of the most ``despicable acts of cruelty and violence'' of the war, and urged renewed efforts to prosecute those responsible for war crimes in Bosnia.
by CNB