ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9512010054
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: From Cox News Service, The Associated Press and Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Effectively ending any prospect that Congress would block President Clinton from sending U.S. soldiers to Bosnia, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole on Thursday urged Republicans to set aside ``partisan posturing'' and support the troops.
Dole, who hopes to challenge Clinton for the presidency next year, stopped short of endorsing the high-stakes mission. ``I don't agree with it; I think it's a mistake,'' he said.
But with 1,400 American advance troops prepared to deploy next week to Bosnia and neighboring Croatia, Dole said, it is too late for Congress to second-guess the president.
He said he plans to introduce a resolution supporting the troops and bring it to a vote within two weeks.
``We have one president at a time, he is the commander-in-chief, he's made the decision,'' the Kansas Republican said. ``We should find a way, if possible, to support the American men and women in uniform on their way to Bosnia.''
Dole did sharply criticize the president for refusing to support arming and training of the Bosnian government forces. He added his voice to a growing chorus who contend that arming the Bosnian military is the key to a U.S. exit.
The United States has assured the Sarajevo government that Bosnian forces will be built up if, as expected, enemy Serbian and Croatian forces do not reduce their military capability.
Dole made the comments as the Clinton administration sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Defense Secretary William Perry and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Shalikashvili to Capitol Hill for the first White House testimony on the Bosnia mission since Bosnian, Croat and Serb leaders initialed a U.S.-brokered Bosnian peace accord last week in Dayton, Ohio.
Perry raised the price tag Thursday for the Bosnia deployment to $2 billion and said the mission will require 32,000 American troops in and around the former Yugoslavia.
The collapse of any threat of a congressional roadblock cleared the way for Clinton to travel to Paris for the Dec. 14 formal signing of the accord. Within days after that, the bulk of the U.S. force - 20,000 troops in Bosnia, and 5,000 in Croatia - would begin deploying, Perry said, noting that he expected the full contingent to be in place by mid-February. Perry said there would also be 7,000 support troops in nearby countries, primarily Italy and Hungary.
It will cost American taxpayers about $1.2 billion to maintain those forces for one year, Perry estimated, plus $800 million for support and for continuing the combat air patrols enforcing the no-fly zone over Bosnia.
The administration is also expecting the United States to contribute $600 million toward economic rebuilding costs in the next three years, part of a $6 billion international package.
Bosnia, which has seen more than 200,000 deaths and 2 million people made homeless since 1992, will be divided into four military zones, a plan reminiscent of the Allied sectors in Germany after World War II.
An American general will direct the 60,000-member NATO forces. U.S. forces will be headquartered in Tuzla and control the northeastern part of the country, including the fiercely contested Posavina corridor, coveted by Croats, Serbs and Muslims alike.
The French and British armies each will oversee a chunk of territory, as will a joint force from the NATO command. Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital that withstood years of siege and bombardment, lies in the French sector.
In a previously unthinkable development, a Russian brigade will serve in the U.S. sector under the command of American generals. So will a Turkish unit and a Nordic unit, to include Scandinavian forces and soldiers from the Baltic countries once occupied by the Soviet Union - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
An advance contingent of 735 troops is beginning to take positions in Bosnia, while another 730 are headed to neighboring Croatia.
As NATO prepared its troop deployment, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to terminate its 31/2-year-old peacekeeping mission in Bosnia by Jan. 31. The council also agreed to close its peacekeeping mission in Croatia by Jan. 15.
Perry conceded that the American troops would face grave risks in Bosnia, including the threats of land mines, snipers, terrorist acts and perhaps attempts at hostage-taking.
Those risks must be weighed, Christopher said, against the risks of not acting: ``There would be more massacres, more concentration camps, more hunger, a real threat of a wider war and immense dangers to our leadership in NATO, in Europe and the world. Those are the alternatives that we must avoid.''
Perry, Shalikashvili and Christopher made these points:
The U.S. troops will travel by rail to a staging area in Hungary and then by road to Tuzla. Perry said the units will travel ``fully armed, ready for any contingencies as they go in.''
No Americans will be involved in arming and training Bosnian Muslim forces, an activity that would put them in the position of helping one side in the 43-month ethnic war.
All foreign troops not part of the peacekeeping force, including some Iranians who have fought with the Bosnian army, must leave within 30 days of the signing of the agreement.
NATO should complete its mission in about six months, then take another six months for complete withdrawal.
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A Bosnian truck driver hands money to a begging boyby CNBThursday on a muddy road in Tuzla, the town that will be
headquarters for U.S. troops in the NATO force. color.