09 June 2005

State Department Report, June 9: Burns Outlines U.S.-Europe Agenda
Airlift of AU forces to Darfur, Balkans resolution among top joint efforts

NATO TO COORDINATE AIRLIFT SUPPORT FOR AFRICAN UNION PEACEKEEPERS

In what Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns has called an historic decision, NATO announced June 9 that it will coordinate airlift support to bring additional African Union (AU) peacekeepers into Sudan's Darfur region.

Burns, in London June 6 for a meeting of the political directors of the Group of Eight nations, told reporters that this was not a traditional NATO operation.

“It’s actually the African Union that has the lead, and the African Union is doing the job,” he said. “We’re not talking about putting thousands, or even hundreds of Europeans and Americans into Sudan, we’re talking about giving them [the AU] the military supports so they can do the job.”

The African Union in April asked both NATO and the European Union (EU) for logistical support to more than double the size of its peacekeeping troops in the Darfur area, where tens of thousands have died in a conflict between African Sudanese and ethnic Arab fighters. The United Nations says more than 3 million displaced persons in Darfur need emergency assistance.

Both NATO and the EU will conduct airlift operations that, according to a NATO press release from its June 9-10 defense ministerial meeting in Brussels, Belgium, will be coordinated from Europe, with the AU responsible for coordinating the movement of its incoming troops on the ground from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. NATO will also provide training in managing a multinational military headquarters and intelligence exchanges.

The airlift, to begin July 1, will help the AU increase its peacekeeping force in the region from 2,700 to over 7,000. Three new battalions will come from Rwanda, two from Senegal and Nigeria, and one from South Africa. Burns said the United States and Canada, working through NATO, have committed to providing more than half the airlift needed. France will work through the EU program to provide airlift for the Senegalese forces.

The amount of urgent work to be done in Darfur, he said, assures that both organizations have a role to play in assisting the AU.

Burns said the political and military emergence of the AU as an effective peacekeeper is a hopeful development and that an increased presence of its troops in Sudan would be invaluable in providing security to relief workers in Darfur and in supporting the January North-South peace agreement to end its 21-year civil war.

U.S. LIFTS FREEZE OF FOREIGN AID TO SERBIA, MONTENEGRO

Also on June 9, the United States lifted a freeze on foreign aid to Serbia and Montenegro following a successful effort by the Serbian government to convince 12 former generals from the 1992-1995 Bosnia war to surrender to The Hague war tribunal. Burns, in his June 6 meeting with reporters, said that cooperation in capturing former General Ratko Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to stand trial for war crimes, would be rewarded with better ties to the West.

“We think the time is right now for [these] final two war criminals to be captured, as well as [former Croatian General Ante] Gotovian in Croatia,” he said. “And when that happens, all three of those governments – Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia – can then begin to enjoy a normal relationship with the western institutions.”

Burns said it was time to “push the Balkans back onto the center stage,” adding that the United States expected the United Nations would be able to convene final status talks on Kosovo before the end of 2005.

“We have very deliberately tried not to proscribe a final status with Kosovo,” the under secretary said.

“It’s a very raw situation and it wouldn’t be right for Europe and the United States to proscribe an outcome before the parties have actually sat down at the negotiating table. They are the ones who have to figure out the future of their country,” he said. “But one thing we do know: the status quo there is absolutely not sustainable.”

Burns said the United States is committed to keeping troops in Kosovo as part of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force, to provide security when final status talks begin. NATO itself confirmed June 9 that KFOR would maintain its full operational capability as the United Nations begins its review this summer of the province’s compliance with international standards – such as observing the rights of minorities.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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