MOSTAR, Sept 5 (Hina) - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in an interview in today's issue of the Sarajevo daily "Dnevni Avaz" that the most important condition for Bosnia-Herzegovina's admission into the Partnership for
Peace programme and NATO was the establishment of a single state command and control structure of the armed forces.
MOSTAR, Sept 5 (Hina) - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson
said in an interview in today's issue of the Sarajevo daily "Dnevni
Avaz" that the most important condition for Bosnia-Herzegovina's
admission into the Partnership for Peace programme and NATO was the
establishment of a single state command and control structure of
the armed forces. #L#
This includes the establishment of a state defence ministry,
Robertson said. The two Bosnian entities - the Federation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska - now have separate
(entity) defence ministries and armed forces.
According to the NATO official, it is not up to the entities, as
parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to command and control parts of the
army. It is Bosnia-Herzegovina's obligation to form a single army,
Robertson said. Commenting on Bosnia's drawing closer to NATO,
Robertson said that apart from strengthening defence institutions
on the state level, also important in the political sense was the
return of refugees. He said that obligations towards the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
must be fulfilled entirely.
(hina) it