THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060536
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
With a new Bosnia cease-fire in hand, NATO planners will speed work on a military force to provide the muscle for any final peace settlement, U.S. and allied defense officials said Thursday.
Defense Secretary William Perry said he was confident NATO could complete planning for a peacekeeping force soon, although some diplomatic obstacles remain and the timing is more urgent now because of the latest step toward a real peace.
``It does mean that if the peace talks proceed quickly and get a peace agreement in, say, early November, NATO would have to be prepared to make a very rapid deployment of its forces,'' Perry said in an interview here with CNN.
First, however, NATO has to overcome obstacles such as Russian objections to joining a multinational peace implementation force under NATO command, Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said.
Perry said he will fly to Geneva for a hastily arranged meeting Sunday with his Russian counterpart, Pavel Grachev. The two will discuss ways of overcoming Moscow's objections to NATO's taking exclusive command of any peace force in Bosnia, Perry said.
Perry and Grachev also will try to settle a festering problem over Russian participation in a U.S. peacekeeping exercise. The exercise had been scheduled to start on Oct. 17 at Fort Riley, Kan., with several hundred U.S. and Russian soldiers, but Moscow has threatened to back out.
Slocombe and officials of other NATO member countries spoke to reporters during a midday break in an allied defense ministers meeting in the restored colonial district of Williamsburg. They said the ministers had not yet begun discussing the complex issue of a NATO role in implementing a Bosnia peace agreement.
The United Nations said Thursday it was cutting its force in Bosnia by more than 9,000 troops, to 21,000, citing ``the military situation in Bosnia stabilizing and the political process gaining momentum.'' The redeployments are expected to begin this month.
U.N. troops will remain in the area until they are replaced by a new force if a peace agreement is reached, a U.N. statement said.
NATO planners have been working for several weeks on what they called a Peace Implementation Force. by CNB