NATO pledges Balkans commitment

George Robertson: Peace in Kosovo is far off

BIRMINGHAM, England -- The head of NATO has said the organisation has no immediate plans to withdraw peacekeeping troops from the Balkans in the wake of Yugoslavia's peaceful revolution.

"It is too early to identify exactly how the changes in Yugoslavia will affect the region," , Secretary General George Robertson said at the opening of an informal meeting of NATO defence ministers in Birmingham, central England.

He added that KFOR and SFOR, the NATO-led forces in Kosovo and Bosnia respectively, would "continue to provide a bedrock of stability as long as it is needed."

The ousting of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been welcome in the West, but his successor Vojislav Kostunica is little known.

Robertson said talks in Birmingham would focus on plans for a European Rapid Reaction Force, a proposed capability of 60,000 troops to carry out humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Europe independently of NATO.

Even as the 19-nation alliance welcomed the return to democracy in Belgrade, the major concern of the ministers was how Kostunica's new government would deal with Kosovo.

Kosovo, which together with Montenegro and the dominant republic of Serbia, comprise the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is occupied by 36,000 NATO-led troops supported by 10,000 more in neighbouring Macedonia and Albania.

The ground forces from 39 countries intervened in Kosovo at the end of last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign. The mission of the force is to provide security while the U.N.-directed civilian authority tries to build permanent peace in Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia.

The situation in Kosovo is not stable, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson acknowledged. Violence is down, but "we've still got a long way to go," he said.

NATO also leads a force of 20,000 in the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ethnic hatred still seethes under the surface in Bosnia, but NATO considers the situation stable enough there to have reduced by two-thirds the 60,000-member force that originally entered the country five years ago.

KFOR has 36,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo

In Bosnia, NATO has the Dayton peace agreement as a framework upon which to build peace. In Kosovo, no such agreement exists.

The majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have demanded independence, and it is by no means certain they will again submit to Serbian rule, no matter who the leader is.

The Kosovo force is being beefed up by about 2,500 for municipal elections on October 28. That involves four battalions from Britain, France, Italy and Greece.

The defence ministers also are to talk about whether to hold out the NATO hand to Serbia or to let other organisations such as the European Union take the lead.

There are few NATO admirers among the Serbs, particularly after the bombing, and some at NATO feel a low profile may be the best approach, at least in the short term.

Admiral Guido Venturoni, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and General Joseph Ralston, the supreme allied commander in Europe, were to brief the defence ministers on the military situation in the Balkans.

The ministers also were to examine the state of NATO's relations with the EU as the 15-nation economic and political bloc begins to develop its own defence arm. The EU has pledged to establish a 60,000-member rapid reaction force by 2003 and has been working with NATO in several areas.

Relations with Russia -- which have been warming somewhat lately after a long hiatus that followed NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia -- also are high on the agenda of the ministers' annual informal meeting.

Norwegian defence minister Bjorn Tore Godal was scheduled to speak about Norway's experience during efforts to rescue seamen aboard the sunken Russian submarine Kursk.

In August, the nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea, taking 118 men to their deaths. After some delay, Moscow sought NATO's expertise in trying to rescue the Kursk's sailors. A British mini-submarine and Norwegian deep-sea divers were dispatched to the Barents Sea, but the attempt was in vain.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
NATO

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