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 | | Monday, 18 February, 2002, 18:39 GMT EU paves way for Bosnia police force  The UN has been working in multi-ethnic Bosnia since 1995 Foreign ministers from the European Union are reported to have agreed on the financing of a 500-strong police mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina. If the mission is officially approved, officers from EU countries will take over policing as of January next year from the UN's International Police Task Force (IPTF), which numbers 1,800 officers. It would be the first deployment of the EU's Rapid Reaction Force, declared partially operational at the end of last year, which is designed to add military strength to the EU's political weight. The IPTF, deployed in 1995 under peace accords which concluded the Bosnian war, has primarily been involved in monitoring and training police in Bosnia's two ethnic entities: the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska. Handover Like the IPTF, the EU's force would work alongside of the Nato-led Stabilization Force (S-For), which currently numbers 18,000 - of which 3,000 are Americans.
The Bosnian deployment, if it goes ahead, would cost an initial 14m euros to set up and a further 38m euros per year to maintain. Sven Federiksen, a Dane who headed a similar police operation in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, has been mentioned as the mission's first chief. According to a report recommending the deployment, published last month, the police force may find themselves taking on problems such as migrant smuggling, customs evasions as well as dealing with the tensions raised by the return of refugees. The report also warned of the dangers of rising social unrest in the country if its economy continued to deteriorate. | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Europe stories now:  Links to more Europe stories are at the foot of the page. | |
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