DEFENCE MINISTER: GERMAN TROOPS WILLING TO HELP ARREST KARADZIC, MLADIC

SARAJEVO, Feb 19 (Hina) - German Defence Minister Petar Struck has said that his country will continue participating in the maintenance of peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina and that German soldiers will assist in operations aimed at the arrest of the two most wanted fugitives, war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.#L# For Bosnia's admission to the (NATO) Partnership for Peace Programme, it is very important that authorities of this country do their best to arrest Karadzic and Mladic. US and German troops are willing to help them in those bids, Minister Struck told reporters in Sarajevo after he held talks with all the three members of Bosnia's collective presidency. The German official reiterated that there were currently 1,800 German soldiers deployed within the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) to which credit should go for full stability and maintenance of peace achieved in Bosnia over the past years. Struck said that after the completion of the current mandate of SFOR and upon the take-over of the mission by the European Union, NATO, including US troops, would remain in Bosnia. The German government will support Bosnia's bids to come closer to NATO and the European Union, and expects from local authorities to do all they can so as to offer assurances to Bosnian citizens that they have a future in their homeland, particularly through creating more jobs. The current chairman of the Bosnian three-man presidency, Dragan Covic, said that everybody in his country was aware that it was bad to obstruct foreign investments, and he admitted that German investors faced some problems when they wanted to invest in Bosnia. Covic said this referring to the recent cases of the car-manufacturing plant in Sarajevo in which Volkswagen recently discontinued production and is now waiting for tariff benefits, or Daimler-Chrysler in the aluminium plant in Mostar in which there were problems about delivery of power supplies. (Hina) ms