Fears grow over pledges to support Bosnia peace

Date: 07/12/1995

EU foreign ministers have now approved deployment of 34,000 troops to Bosnia in a joint NATO peace-making effort, but officials worry that they will not be backed up in time by the civilian efforts required to keep the peace.

Their fears have been heightened by the postponement of a pledging conference originally scheduled for later this month and by political jockeying by governments seeking control of, or credit for, various peace efforts.

“We are worried that we will go in there and we'll be left holding the baby,” said one NATO official.

A raft of conferences scheduled for the coming weeks, beginning tomorrow (8 December) in London, will comfort NATO - but only if they are productive.

After the warring parties sign a peace treaty in Paris on 14 December, a conference in Bonn on 18 December will attempt to give them concrete directions for reducing their stockpiles of weapons during the next six months.

A meeting on 20 December in Brussels is designed to assess reconstruction needs.

The NATO operation is intended to last a year and is aimed at creating a secure environment for the civilian tasks of resettling refugees, rebuilding infrastructure, creating police forces and bringing life back to normal.

“If those things aren't done, people will look to us to do it, and the NATO mission will go off track,” said an official.

“If the London conference does not take the civilian effort in hand, there will be lots of alarm bells ringing.”

In London, EU member states are expected to announce their selection of Bosnia mediator Carl Bildt as the new High Representative to former Yugoslavia, charged with coordinating civilian contributions to the NATO peace implementation operation and political initiatives on the ground, such as organising Bosnian elections.

Reconstruction efforts are to be led by the European Commission and the World Bank, through a donors' 'steering committee'. But Commission officials seem concerned about whether Bildt will also oversee them.

“London must clarify that,” one official said.

The Brussels meeting on 20 December was meant to be a pledging conference for reconstruction efforts. But France has reduced it to an 'evaluation' conference to prepare the ground for a real pledging conference in January or February. Paris said formal pledging must wait until Washington and Tokyo make better offers, but Commission officials regard this as an attempt to reduce their role in Bosnia.

The Commission has been calling for a pledging conference since September, immediately after the signing of the peace treaty, maintaining that a delay would only exacerbate the EU's image of having dallied in Bosnia. NATO officials also see a greater danger in delay.

“The military, civilian and arms control efforts have to get going concurrently,” said one. “If they drag, it is likely that peace will unravel.”

The World Bank estimates reconstruction of the war-torn region will cost at least 4 billion ecu. Commission officials say they do not have to wait until next year to get money flowing to Bosnia. They are expected to tell the Brussels meeting that the EU can send 200 million ecu in a couple of weeks. Croatia, however, will have to wait until 1996 before it sees any reconstruction aid. That question may be addressed at the pledging conference early next year.

The EU estimates it can deliver 1 billion ecu in grants to Bosnia and Croatia over the four-year period from 1996 to 1999. Humanitarian aid would be added to that, beginning with a 111-million-ecu budget from January to June, 1996.

EU member state contributions to the reconstruction effort would be in addition to the 1-billion-ecu budget.