By Edith M. Lederer
Associated PressJune 21, 2000
The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday to keep the NATO-led peacekeeping force and the U.N. mission in Bosnia for another year, but Russia abstained to protest Yugoslavia's exclusion from a 46-nation meeting on Bosnia last month.
Five years after the war in Bosnia ended, the council approved a resolution by a vote of 14-0 stating that "the situation in the region continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security."
The council gave strong backing to the Stabilization Force led by NATO which has played a key role in providing security since the 3 1/2-year war in Bosnia ended in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
The council also supported the 3,400-strong U.N. mission in Bosnia, which helps oversee some civilian components of the Dayton pact, including the return of refugees and the building of government institutions. Some 1,575 U.N. civilian police train and monitor officers from the Serb, Muslim and Croat communities.
In the resolution, the council welcomed positive steps taken by Croatia to implement the Dayton agreement, emphasized that the return of refugees "continues to be crucial to lasting peace," and expressed support for a declaration issued on May 24 at a meeting of Bosnia's Peace Implementation Council.
The Brussels meeting was boycotted by Russia and China in protest of Yugoslavia's exclusion by the council. Yugoslavia, a signatory to the Dayton agreement, called its omission a violation of the peace accords.
The council's steering board barred Yugoslavia from the meeting because the Belgrade government includes indicted war criminals and because sanctions resulting from Yugoslavia's actions in Kosovo bar hundreds of officials from entering the European Union.
Before Wednesday's vote, Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said his government backed the "general thrust" of the Bosnia resolution but protested the further isolation of Yugoslavia, saying it would have "very serious consequences for the entire Balkan region and international efforts to stabilize the situation."
China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan voted for the resolution but echoed Lavrov's warning saying: "Isolating and excluding (Yugoslavia) does not help to solve the problem of Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as the other problems of the Balkans region."
The United States, Britain, and Canada, however, supported the Peace Implementation Council's decision to exclude Yugoslavia - and its declaration.
U.S. deputy ambassador James Cunningham called the Peace Implementation Council's role vital and said Yugoslavia had done nothing since it walked out of a council meeting in December 1998 in Madrid "to support implementation of the Dayton accords or to merit its participation in the peace implementation process."
