U.S. military experts are scouting conditions for thousands of American troops due to arrive within weeks as part of a NATO force given the task of keeping the peace in Bosnia.
"We've got a lot to do and very little time to do it," said Col. John Brown, chief of staff for the 1st Armored Division, based in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. He arrived Wednesday with nine other officers at the dingy northern Bosnian city of Tuzla as part of the NATO mission, known as the Implementation Force, or IFOR.Wary of attention, the team is one of the first to survey the U.N. airbase at Tuzla and its hilly, smog-shrouded surroundings, right up to the frontline between Bosnian government and rebel Serb forces.
Within weeks, pending U.S. congressional approval and a formal signing of the peace pact in Paris on Dec. 14, some 20,000 U.S. soldiers will begin arriving and then fan out across northeastern Bosnia. French, British and other troops will patrol the rest of the country.
But before they arrive, Brown's teams will be bouncing over hundreds of miles of northeastern Bosnia, checking landing strips, potholed roads, scores of villages and many minefields.
The GIs will face "the same dangers that have been here for several years and will continue. That's why we're down here," Brown told reporters.
Brown said that based on their four-to-five-day trip, his team would decide how many soldiers and supplies to put around Tuzla, and whether to base the U.S. headquarters here or someplace else.
"We'll ensure that wherever they go, (they) will be secure. And then we'll look at access and other considerations," he said.
As NATO prepared to dispatch up to 60,000 troops to police the peace deal, European Union envoy Carl Bildt arrived in Sarajevo to push rival leaders to work on securing public confidence in the peace.
Bildt, who met with officials on both the government and Serb sides of Sarajevo, emphasized that building confidence on both sides of the confrontation line was vital.
His warning coincided with a protest by thousands of Serbs against the planned reunification of Sarajevo under the peace plan.
Serbs have been protesting for days in Serb-held districts, fearing they might be forced to leave if the entire city is put under the control of their enemies.