U.S. Department of State 95/11/28 Daily Press Briefing

From: Thanos Tsekouras <thanost@MIT.EDU>

U.S. State Department Directory

DEPARTMENT -- Announcement

Secretary's Congressional Testimony Schedule...............1

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FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Congressional Support of Troop Deployment..................2

Security Guarantees to IFOR................................17-18

Deployment of IFOR.........................................18

Adherence to Annex 1 (a) of Agreement......................19

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MR. BURNS: Good afternoon. Welcome back, Carol.

Q Thank you.

MR. BURNS: Good afternoon. Welcome to the State Department briefing. I have two quick announcements.

First, Secretary Christopher, along with Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvili, will be testifying this week, this Thursday, before the House International Relations Committee at l0:00 a.m. and the House Committee on National Security at 2:00 p.m. That testimony will be on Bosnia.

On Friday, they intend to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at l0:00, and we are still trying to schedule a session with the Senate Arms Services Committee. It is unclear when that will be held. So this Thursday and Friday, at least three sessions with the House and Senate on Bosnia.

[...]

Q Bosnia. All right. Nick, concerning the security guarantees to IFOR, the President last night mentioned that all three major signatories of the Dayton agreement had guaranteed -- sent letters of guaranteeing protection for IFOR forces. Do you have any specific information as to whether, for example, the Bosnian Muslim Government would step in and protect IFOR from, say, raiding bands or snipers or something like that? Is this what they have in mind?

And, secondly, back to my question of yesterday, is -- why does not IFOR, NATO, look and see if there's conformity to the military annex of this treaty before deploying, looking before leaping into the situation?

MR. BURNS: Bill, our troops will protect themselves, and the President said last night that they will be fully empowered to protect themselves. They will be operating under extremely robust and aggressive rules of engagement, quite different from the rules of engagement that our troops operate under in Haiti or in Lebanon in the early 1980s.

So I think the American people can be assured that our troops, which will be under American leadership, will be fully empowered to protect themselves in every eventuality. That's first.

Second, the President did say last night that he had received letters from the three Presidents -- President Milosevic, President Izetbegovic and President Tudjman -- saying that they would do their utmost to insure that the conditions were appropriate for a safe deployment of NATO forces, and we expect that to be the case. Those are commitments made in writing. They were made as part of the Dayton peace process.

I think that those letters have even made public, so you can see exactly what was said in those letters. They've been made available to all members of Congress.

It's an important commitment. Because what distinguishes this operation from Vietnam or Korea or Somalia or Lebanon over the past several decades is that these parties have agreed to peace; there is a peace agreement in place; there is a cease-fire that has preceded the peace agreement and that continues through the peace agreement.

Our soldiers will be going in with an essential and clear military mission. And that is, once the Paris peace agreement is signed, the clock starts. The warring parties -- previously warring parties, the troops that are in place -- Bosnian Government or Bosnian Serb -- have an obligation within 30 days to move back -- to create, in effect, a demilitarized zone; to have that zone patrolled by NATO forces. They will move back. They are committed to move back.

The statements from Pale this morning, on CNN, by Mr. Karadzic are welcomed statements -- welcome, in the sense that we would fully expect that this would be his orientation and that of General Mladic, and that is that the troops would be welcome in all parts of the region and they would be allowed to carry out their mission.

But as President Clinton said last night, everyone in that region should be forewarned -- our troops will take whatever precautions they need to take to protect themselves and to fulfill the military mission that is clearly laid out in the NATO operational plan.

On the last part of your question, the President said very clearly last night, he needs to be briefed on the NATO plan. He needs to approve that plan. At some point thereafter, he will make the decision to deploy troops, but until he's had a chance to approve the NATO military plan.

Q And which comes first -- the pullback to barracks, getting out of the way of the indigenous troops or the deployment, or are they going to be simultaneous?

MR. BURNS: It's simultaneous. The clock starts in Paris on some day in mid-December, when the signatures are applied to the treaty. At that point, I think we've been very clear that NATO would deploy within a matter of days and build up to a full-force contingent at some point thereafter in the future. But I believe the military has talked about 96 hours.

The clock starts for the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Government and the Croatian military. They will pull back from the areas clearly delineated for them in the military annex and in the very detailed maps that will soon be presented to all the parties by the United States. It will be clear what their own obligations are. It will be clear where they have to go and what the role of the NATO forces will be.

Q Nick, why, again, doesn't NATO require performance on this treaty as a requisite to deployment apriori?

MR. BURNS: Bill, what you mean by "performance."

Q Performance on Annex 1(a) to see that that is being abided and the troops are withdrawn before the deployment begins?

MR. BURNS: They've committed to withdraw the troops. They will withdraw the troops one way or the other. They will withdraw them voluntarily. If they do not withdraw them voluntarily, they will be made to withdraw them by the NATO forces.

The fact is, once the treaty is signed NATO has an obligation to insert itself very quickly, and will do so within a number of days.

Q NATO, you say, will enforce as it deploys, if there is not conformity to --

MR. BURNS: The military annex is very clear, Bill. The military annex calls for the voluntary pullback of all the factions to the designated lines that are proscribed in great detail in the military annex. If the parties do not comply, the NATO forces will be fully equipped and fully empowered to enforce that compliance, but we don't believe that will be a problem.

We believe, certainly based on the statements we've heard from Mr. Karadzic and others, that there will be no problem with that.

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Q You objected before when it was suggested that you've gotten off the military talks. You've gotten off direct negotiations just now?

MR. BURNS: No, I haven't.

Q Well we just had Proximity Talks, for instance. It seems to have worked very well. Camp David was Proximity Talks -- really Proximity Talks.

MR. BURNS: Dayton were Proximity Talks, and they went very well.

Q I hope I said Dayton. But Camp David certainly was.

MR. BURNS: Bosnia is apples and oranges compared to the Middle East.

Q What I'm saying is, we have had now two experiences of successful Proximity Talks. Dayton was mostly Proximity. They got together a little bit. Camp David, they never saw each other -- the leaders -- until the agreement.

You're leaving the door open to some other approach other than direct negotiations. Do you intend to?

MR. BURNS: I'm actually being very careful today not to try to obligate Ambassador Ross or Secretary Christopher to do this or that, or to prescribe any particular tactical solution as a way to move these parties forward.

The fact is, you know, whatever it takes to get the talks going is certainly going to be --

[...]

(The briefing concluded at l:57 p.m.)

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