GENEVA, Oct. 8 -- The United States and Russia failed Sunday to resolve differences over the likely chain of command of NATO's proposed multinational peacekeeping force for Bosnia but agreed that the operation's name would bare no reference to the Western alliance. The name of the operation was the only significant breakthrough made on the Balkan conflict after an all-day meeting between U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and his Russian counterpart, Pavel Grachev, their fourth meeting this year. 'There are difficult problems to be worked out, particularly in the area of command and control,' Perry said. 'We discussed a number of approaches to working out complex details of Russian participation and I believe we made substantial progress today.' 'We agreed on the importance of the forces working together for the common objective of achieving a separation of the (warring Bosnian) forces and achieving the other goals that would be agreed to in a peace settlement,' Perry said. The operation will be known as the Implementation Force of the Peace Agreement on Bosnia-Herzegovina and will require a United Nations mandate to sanction deployment of troops and outline their mission in Bosnia. 'I do not want to underestimate what we are not able to agree on, how the operation of control of the forces will be affected,' Perry said. 'I think those issues will be discussed and possibly resolved at meetings at (Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers) headquarters.' The United States wants political control of a multinational force to rest with NATO, but Russia wants to play a more leading role in dictating the direction of the peacekeeping operation.
'We suggested that there will be two variants, political and military data and command over the future multinational forces after a decision by the Security Council of the United Nations,' he said. Grachev said Moscow had offered to supply two battalions of troops that are already stationed in Bosnia as well as reinforce the operation with an additional division but that the United States had wanted more Russian troops on the ground. The United States has proposed sending thousands of ground and support troops to police a peace settlement in Bosnia. Russia will send an envoy to the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe, SHAPE, to resolve the number of troops Moscow would be required to provide to Bosnia as well as determine the eventual command structure for the multinational force and the financing arrangements. 'We have agreed to provide additional Russian forces to the area based on the results of the planning,' Grachev said. 'First of all this issue is who is going to approve the plan of the peacekeeping operation and who will bare the responsibility for the execution of the plan.' One area of discussion still to be resolved is the geographic distribution of any multinational force. Russia, a traditional ally of the Bosnian Serbs, would prefer to have control of specific parts of Bosnia. 'The only thing we don't want is the Russian troops on one side of Bosnia and NATO's on the other,' a U.S. official said. He added that Russian troops would have to be equally dispersed among the multinational peacekeepers. The two ministers discussed NATO's desire to expand east to include former Warsaw pact countries under its Partnership for Peace program, but Grachev said Moscow rejected the principal of the security arrangements offered by the initiative. 'It is unacceptable for us that NATO should enlarge to the east; at the same time we are ready to continue our cooperation with the alliance, but this by no means will show that we agree to NATO enlargement,' Grachev said. Russia and NATO will establish a consultative commission to examine ways of overcoming Moscow's opposition to the program as well as look at shoring up shortcomings of the Partnership for Peace. 'I explained that the NATO expansion was proceeding deliberately but it was proceeding, not only for full participation for Russia in the Partnership for Peace but that a special consultative commission be established between Russia and NATO to deal with those important security matters not covered by the Partnership for Peace,' Perry said. The two countries also agreed to hold joint military exercises on Oct. 23, the day presidents Clinton and Yeltsin are scheduled to hold their summit meeting in Hyde Park, New York. 'I look forward to hosting minister Grachev in the United States later this month at the time when Russian troops come to Fort Riley, Kansas for a joint peacekeeping exercise,' Perry added.
