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U.N. mission in Bosnia gets a brief reprieve

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Wa shington JULY 4. The Bush administration has backed away, at least for now, from its threat of shutting down the United Nations Mission in Bosnia.

On Wednesday, the United States agreed to a further 12-day reprieve for the police training mission in Bosnia. The mission's mandate has now been extended until July 15. "We do have to find some kind of resolution to this problem in due course. Otherwise, we are going to be confronting it in a number of different situations," the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, said. The U.S. may have changed its stance following a letter written by the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. The unusually blunt letter apparently warned the Bush administration that its action placed the entire U.N. peacekeeping operations at risk. Mr. Annan is reported to have told Gen. Powell that no peacekeeper in U.N. history had committed crimes that would fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC. "...the whole system of United Nations peacekeeping is being put at risk," Mr. Annan said.

The Security Council will again take up next week the extension of the U.N. mission in Bosnia and members will have to address Washington's concerns. The Republican administration's "threat" to shut down peacekeeping operations one by one still holds even if there are indications of its stand softening. For instance, Washington has said that its 46 strong personnel in the Bosnia police training mission and some 3,000 soldiers in the NATO force stationed in Bosnia will not be withdrawn.

Diplomatically, there is pressure on the Security Council to come to grips with the issue and in concrete terms. There are about 15 U.N. peacekeeping missions all over the world from East Timor to Cyprus to the Congo. In the immediate context, apart from Bosnia, U.N. mandates end this month in Lebanon, Georgia and in the Western Sahara.

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