Brussels, 18/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - Germany having waived its reservation on the funding of the future police force in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the General Affairs Council reached agreement on Monday on the mission of 500 officers that the European Union will deploy from 1 January 2003. This mission will take over from that of the UN (IPTF) that currently has 1,674 officers, 535 of which Europeans (the largest contingent is German with 164 officers). The Council urged the Spanish Presidency and Javier Solana to inform the international community that the EU was ready to assume this mission. It also recalled its intention of appointing the future Special High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina (for the UN), Paddy Ashdown, as EU Special Representative (see EUROPE of 16 February, p.5).
The agreement covers: (1) the mission's goal, which comes within the general strategy for the country's stabilisation and alignment on European norms relating to police matters; (2) the chain of command in which come the Special Representative and a police Commissioner, responsible for the daily management, under the authority of the High Representative for Cfsp, Javier Solana; (3) the financial aspects: 14 million euro for the start-up are covered by the budget 2002 and the 38 million necessary for each year, between 2003 and 2005, will be distributed between member states (18 million for wages and the cost of personnel placed at disposal) and the Cfsp budget (10 million are available on an annual basis and the Commission is to consult Parliament to see if it is possible to release the 10 million missing. If all or part of this sum cannot be released under the next Cfsp budgets, there will be recourse to Article 28 of the EU Treaty to finance the remainder of national contributions in a relation to the key GNP); (4) arrangements for co-ordination and contributions of third States in the mission.
At a press conference, the EU's Special High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Wolfgang Petritsch, said that around 830,000 refugees (100,000 of them over the course of the preceding year) had gone back to Bosnia-Herzegovina and areas where they are in a minority. This is very important for the future, he said, in that it shows that the architects of ethnic cleansing had failed. He highlighted the importance for the reconciliation process of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, again calling for Karadzic and Mladic to be arrested (expressing his personal frustration and the frustration of people who can't understand why they haven't been arrested yet). On the progress Bosnia-Herzegovina had made towards joining the Council of Europe in the near future, Mr Petritsch said it was time for the EU to launch a genuine partnership as part of the stabilisation and association process to support and encourage the country to make reforms. He said that the police force would give the EU greater visibility in Bosnia, asserting that the population needed it if they were to feel involved in the European integration process.