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Microcap & Penny Stocks : FRANKLIN TELECOM (FTEL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William Harvey who wrote (35618)	7/7/1998 7:00:00 PM
From: wombat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41046

Our tax dollars at work... literally..... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Report: Bosnia Needs Troops To Stay By LAURA MYERS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- A substantial NATO-led force, including U.S. troops, will need to stay in Bosnia for some time to maintain a fragile peace, according to a congressional report released Tuesday. ''The goal of a self-sustaining peace process in Bosnia remains elusive, primarily due to the continued intransigence of Bosnia's political leaders,'' the General Accounting Office said. The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, was requested by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C. It was dated June 5, but released Tuesday, going to a Congress that's been reluctant to provide fresh funding for the Bosnia operation, in place since the 3 1/2-year war ended in December 1995. President Clinton, in December of last year, announced that the U.S. military would continue to participate in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance peacekeeping force beyond June 1998. He didn't set a deadline for withdrawal this time, making it an open-ended proposition. About 7,000 U.S. troops remain in Bosnia as part of the 34,000-member force, which NATO has agreed to maintain for at least another year. Neither the House nor Senate has yet made any provision for paying for maintaining peacekeeping troops in Bosnia beyond Sept. 30, 1998. The mission has cost the United States about $10 billion so far. The current administration request is for $1.9 billion. Defense officials say taking it from other accounts would seriously jeopardize U.S. readiness. The Senate could grapple with the issue as early as this week, when it takes up a defense appropriations bill. In late June, the Senate, on a 90-5 vote, called on Clinton to bring U.S. troops home from Bosnia ''within a reasonable period of time.'' The GAO report, however, said there's much still to be done to implement the 1995 Dayton peace accord, which divided Bosnia between a Bosnian Serb-governed half and an entity governed by a joint Muslim, Serb and Croat administration. The report cites return of war refugees as a continuing problem and says political and civil reforms are going slow, mostly because of reluctant local Bosnian leaders. ''A substantial NATO-led force is still needed to provide security for the civil aspects of the operation,'' the report said, adding that ''it will likely be some time'' before the Dayton goals are met. The State Department, in response, said the report was too pessimistic and didn't take into account recent developments that have allowed thousands of refugees to return home without fear of violence. ''We do not believe it (the report) sufficiently conveys the momentum, hope and prospects that the developments of the last half of 1997 and the first few months of 1998 have brought to the overall circumstances in Bosnia and Herzegovina,'' the State Department said. The State Department comments, however, were written in April, before violence in nearby Kosovo began threatening to spill over into Bosnia. Kosovo is in southern Serbia, the dominant republic in what remains of Yugoslavia. Some 90 percent of its population is ethnic Albanian. Hundreds of civilians have been killed there by Serbian forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.