Cook: warns against speedy withdrawal

Cook: Nato Troops Might Have To Stay in Bosnia

At a two-day meeting of Nato ministers in Sintra, Portugal, held over Thursday and Friday, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook will also repeat his insistence that if US troops were to withdraw, Britain and her European partners would also pull out.

However, officials were keen to stress that the emphasis at Sintra would be on how to make the Dayton peace treaty work.

The accord was reached in December, 1995, ending more than three years of war, but since then the Bosnian, Croat and Serb communities have shown virtually no sign of rebuilding the country together as the treaty envisaged.

The United States has insisted that the 30,000-strong Stabilisation Force (SFOR) be pulled out of Bosnia on schedule in June 1998 come what may.

Mr Cook first floated the idea that troops might remain longer when he met his US counterpart, Madeleine Albright, in Washington last week.

He believes that unless the implementation of the Dayton Agreement improves markedly, it may prove difficult for the allies to contemplate total withdrawal in a year's time.

He is keenly aware that any realistic evaluation must include America, and his "one out, all out" view is that if the US removed its troops, the rest of the peacekeeping force could not remain.

British sources say there have been signs that Ms Albright's resistance to extending SFOR's mandate beyond June 1998 could be weakening, but that the Pentagon still strongly opposes the idea.