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Eu bosnia force to replace nato { October 8 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,1058306,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,1058306,00.html
Ashdown backs creation of EU Bosnia force
Ian Black in Brussels
Wednesday October 8, 2003
The Guardian
The European Union must allay American fears and win the trust of Bosnians if it wants to replace Nato peacekeepers in Bosnia, Lord Ashdown said yesterday
Lord Ashdown, the inter- national community's high representative for Bosnia, said he supported the EU's goal of replacing the Nato-led Stabilisation Force (S-For) next year, but warned it could not be done "on the cheap".
Arguments would have to be won in Washington and Sarajevo, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats said during a visit to Brussels.
"This is Europe's problem, in Europe's backyard," he said. "It is scandalous that 50 years after the second world war we still have to wait for Uncle Sam to come in and bail us out."
But it was still important to keep the US involved. "It is not in the nature of superpowers to give up the areas in which they have major influence. Even before Iraq I had my doubts. In effect, Washington has a veto on this process."
EU defence ministers said at the weekend they hoped to replace S-For by EU-For in the second half of next year, a timeframe the US had previously rejected as too soon.
S-For, commanded by Nato, was created after the 1995 Dayton peace accords and has kept the peace ever since. It has 13,000 soldiers, 1,500 of them American, but this total is due to be reduced to 6,000 to 8,000 next year.
Europe's fledgling rapid reaction force has so far taken on only small peacekeeping operations in Macedonia and Congo, and Bosnia is seen as its biggest test.
US doubts are linked to suspicion of European ambitions, and especially an attempt by France and Germany to establish a defence identity independent of Nato. But Washington seems to have warmed to the idea of the force, especially if it is under British command, because of its heavy military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Europe has to look serious about this," Lord Ashdown said. "It cannot come in on the cheap. It has to come in as an effective force capable of securing the peace. It has to do it with bayonets fixed and flags flying."
The EU would also have to improve its credibility with the local authorities. "The Bosnians distrust Europe," he said.
"They regard Europeans as the people who sat there and did nothing for four years while they were slaughtered. The Americans are the people who came in and saved them. That's unfair ... But we do have a credibility problem."
Lord Ashdown defended S-For's failure to catch Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, who still faces genocide charges at the UN war crimes tribunal, along with Ratko Mladic, the Serb military commander.
He said: "This guy is probably up on the wildest mountain fastness in Europe where Tito hid 16,000 partisans against six German divisions."
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