Officials Say Clinton To Continue Peacekeeping Mission In Bosnia U.S. Troops To Stay Past June Deadline
President Clinton has decided that U.S. troops should stay in Bosnia past their mission’s current departure deadline in June as part of an international peacekeeping force, administration officials said Wednesday.
Clinton, who is planning to visit troops stationed in Bosnia next week, is expected to announce at the White House today that he has decided “in principle” to extend the mission.
About 8,000 Americans are serving in Bosnia, as part of a NATO-led force of more than 30,000.
Administration officials said Clinton was not going to announce the number of troops that will remain, when they might leave or even how the mission might change, since those details are under review in NATO. It is that review, together with the president’s coming holiday visit to the troops, that prompted his long-expected decision to extend the mission, officials said.
“None of this planning will ever be real or taken seriously by the Euros unless the U.S. is in,” an administration official said, referring to other members of the NATO alliance. “We are the glue that has held this thing together.”
NATO planners are expected to lay out their specific military options in Bosnia by mid-January or soon after. Military officials are looking at a range of options for the American component of the peacekeeping force, including keeping 8,000 American troops in Bosnia, an administration official said. More likely, other officials have indicated, the force will shrink, perhaps to 6,000.
This will be Clinton’s second extension of a mission that has been controversial since he first ordered ground troops into Bosnia to carry out peace accords negotiated in Dayton in 1995. Clinton originally said the troops would be there for only one year, through the end of 1996. But days after the presidential election last year, he said the troops would stay through June 1998.
No American troops have fallen to hostile fire during the Bosnian mission. Despite criticism that key provisions of the Dayton accords - most notably the repatriation of refugees and the arrest of accused war criminals - have not been carried out, the international force as successfully secured a fragile peace.
Congressional critics of the administration’s Bosnia policy never believed that what the administration called the “date certain” for the withdrawal was real. “I certainly hope that they don’t insult our intelligence again with another date certain,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday. “I never believed that a date certain was a substitute for an exit strategy.”
McCain said Congress might permit the extension, since its only option is the unappealing one of cutting off money to the troops. But, he said, the administration’s “credibility in my view has been terribly damaged,” by officials’ testimony that the force would leave by July.
Administration officials say they have learned lessons from the long mission in Bosnia. This time, they said, they are not waiting until the last minute, but seeking support for an extension seven months before the current mission expires.
“The president wanted us to engage early on this,” another administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This is being done in a deliberate way that is not at all hasty.”