GIs Likely to Remain in Bosnia Into 1997

Senior Clinton administration officials insisted Thursday that the current military mission in Bosnia will end in late December as planned, but shaky conditions in the region and the near-certainty of a “follow-on” force suggest that a substantial number of American soldiers will probably remain in the Balkans through much or all of next year.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary William J. Perry declared that the military tasks of the multi-nation peace implementation force--dubbed IFOR--have been largely completed. He said President Clinton will be able to keep his promise that the troops he ordered into Bosnia-Herzegovina last Dec. 20 will be out or on their way out in one year.

“IFOR will be withdrawn on schedule,” he stated flatly.

Sitting next to Perry at the Senate hearing, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that removal of the 15,000 American troops serving in Bosnia will begin before the politically sensitive anniversary date but will take more than three months to complete.

He showed senators a chart that displayed a reduction in American forces to 10,000 by Dec. 20, to 7,500 by Feb. 1 and reaching zero by mid-March.

Earlier in the day, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared similarly unequivocal about the fate of the mission in remarks at a breakfast with reporters, declaring: “It will end on Dec. 20th.”

But behind these apparent reassurances is a more complicated reality that senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization sources believe will keep several thousand U.S. troops in Bosnia at least for the balance of 1997.

The apparent contradiction is a matter of semantics.

Americans now serving in Bosnia as part of IFOR could easily be reassigned immediately to a follow-up force that most of those familiar with the region now believe is inevitable to prevent a slide back into war.

Many British, French and other European forces were reassigned to IFOR from the ill-fated U.N. Protection Force in December after the signing of a peace accord.

Senior officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels said Thursday that contingency planning for the post-IFOR period will not begin until later this month. They added that a force of 20,000 to 25,000--less than half the size of IFOR’s current strength of 52,000--is already emerging as the preferred successor.

The primary mission of this smaller force would be ensuring freedom of movement and assisting civilian police in maintaining security. It would also probably have a mandate of about one year, the officials said.

One NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the existence of such a force without American troops is unthinkable.

“If we’ve learned anything in Bosnia, it’s that militarily, the Europeans can’t do it on their own,” he said.

Politically too the Europeans see American involvement in such a force as crucial to its credibility.

“The concept of a European-only [military] force was never contemplated,” said Gilles Andreani, director of the policy planning staff at the French Foreign Ministry.

While NATO planners will also be looking at the possibility of a total pullout, few see that as a real option.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week, former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Bosnian peace agreement, dismissed the notion as irresponsible.

“No responsible person can contemplate going from 60,000 troops down to zero,” he said.

NATO defense ministers discussed the post-IFOR issue for the first time at an informal meeting in Norway last week, and one participant said Perry told his colleagues that the United States is ready to take part in a new mandate. “He said if the Americans were needed, they’d be there,” the source said.

Albright also seemed to leave the door open for further American military involvement. “We never said that our whole responsibility toward Bosnia would end on Dec. 20th,” Albright said. “I think the American people would not want us just to drop the whole issue.”