The ceremony was attended by Canadian Defence Minister Bill Graham, Stabilisation Force (SFOR) commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina Virgil Packett, senior officers from Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, and senior members of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serb Army.
In his address, Minister Graham recalled that Canadian soldiers had been taking part in multinational forces in Bosnia for 13 years.
Brigadier General Beare said that the Canadian contingent would be significantly reduced by the end of the year, when SFOR is to be replaced by a European Union force, and that only about a hundred Canadian officers would remain stationed near Banja Luka at the beginning of next year.
He recalled that during his one-year term members of the unit had collected 4,000 infantry weapons, 12,000 hand grenades, several thousand artillery shells and missiles, 64 mortars with 17,000 shells, and a number of highly developed missile and artillery systems, in cooperation with citizens and local police.