Global Policy Forum

By Leslie Miller

The United States will preserve its role in keeping postwar Bosnia stable, even if a dispute over U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court is not resolved by a midnight deadline, the White House said Wednesday.

"We will not abandon Bosnia," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Fleischer sidestepped a question about whether U.S. military personnel would be withdrawn from peacekeeping missions in Bosnia — or which ones — if efforts under way at the United Nations to find a compromise fail.

The United States has threatened to end U.N. peacekeeping in Bosnia unless American personnel are given immunity from prosecution by the new international war-crimes tribunal. At issue is a U.N. Security Council resolution to extend the Bosnia mission, which was vetoed by the United States Sunday and then given a 72-hour extension.

About 3,000 U.S. soldiers are participating in a 1,500-strong U.N. police training mission in Bosnia as well as an 18,000-member NATO-led peacekeeping force in the country. Fleischer suggested that even if the U.N. mission ends, the NATO forces would remain.

"Our military people in the field are well prepared and equipped to do whatever we ask them to do," Fleischer said. "The question becomes, is this a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping mission at that point? That's why we're working hard with the United Nations to get an agreement so that all can stay in the region to fulfill that mission."

President Bush opposes the court because it could order the arrest, trial and imprisonment of citizens of the United States and other countries that haven't agreed to the court's creation.

Fleischer said it is not even clear whether American diplomats — ordinarily protected by diplomatic immunity — would be at risk of politically motivated prosecutions. "This court can do pretty much what this court seeks to do," he said.

The European Union on Wednesday rejected a U.S. proposal to keep U.S. peacekeepers from prosecution by the tribunal. The Bush administration proposed a possible compromise that would allow the five permanent council members — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — to use their vetoes to permanently block the court's investigation or prosecution of peacekeepers.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the European Union presidency, expressed hope a solution to U.S. opposition could be found. He said he was trying to resolve differences in Washington talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Earlier Wednesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the dispute would not diminish the U.S. commitment to Bosnian peacekeeping.

"From the U.S. perspective nothing is going to happen" in the peacekeeping force, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. "It's in together, out together."

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States will honor all its current peacekeeping commitments around the world even though U.S. peacekeepers are not immune from prosecution by the new court. But in the future, the United States will seek immunity for its troops before sending them on peacekeeping missions, Rumsfeld said.

Bush said he'll try to break the logjam without ratifying the treaty establishing the court. "The one thing we're not going to do is sign on," Bush said Tuesday while touring a Milwaukee church to promote his domestic agenda.

The court was launched on Monday to try those accused of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. On that day the United States withdrew two U.S. military observers serving with the United Nations in East Timor.

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