Military Offers Bosnia Web Site

NATO’s Bosnia peace force may do its work by land, by sea, and by air, but its deeds will now be etched in cyberspace.

This week, the Defense Department formally opened BosniaLINK, a World Wide Web site dedicated to Operation Joint Endeavor, the U.S.-NATO peacekeeping operation that is about to send 60,000 troops to the Balkans.

The idea is to try to let everyone with a mouse in on the gigantic effort to plant peace in Bosnia.

Available at the site are maps - well, just one so far - news releases, transcripts of briefings, speeches and testimony, as well as biographies and fact sheets, all relating to the project. It may soon carry photos.

The address is: http://www.dtic.dla.mil/bosnia/

“We’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, in anticipation of the operation,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Joan Ferguson, a Pentagon spokeswoman. “The intent is: How can we use the technology that exists today … in our effort to get information out to the public?”

“It’s aimed toward the public and it is an information service, obviously, for the news media as well as an easy reference for spelling of obscure locations (and a source of) biographies, unit designations and testimony” in Congress.

Ferguson said 44,000 visits to the site were registered on Monday, its opening day.

That compares to an average of about 67,000 “hits” per week on the Pentagon’s initial web site, Defense-LINK.