CNN - U.S. troops begin Bosnia pullout

But more coming to cover withdrawal

October 9, 1996
Web posted at: 11:30 a.m. EDT 1530 GMT)

(CNN) -- Almost one year after they began arriving, the first U.S. troops left the former Yugoslavia Wednesday, beginning a withdrawal the Pentagon says will last until March. To cover the pullout, some 5,000 additional U.S. troops will be sent to the region. The first of those left Germany on Tuesday.

About 240 soldiers left in two convoys from the Croatian town of Slavonski Brod, across the Sava River from Bosnia, from where they arrived earlier in the week, according to an IFOR spokesman in the border town.

IFOR is the NATO-led international peace implementation force comprised of some 60,000 troops stationed in Bosnia after the warring parties signed a peace accord last December, ending three and a half years of Bosnian war. About 15,000 of the troops are from the United States.

Bosnia to Croatia to Hungary

The first withdrawing troops will spend about one week at a staging base in Taszar, Hungary, before traveling to Germany, he said. One hundred were from the 1st Armored Division Artillery and 140 from a military police company that formed part of the Fifth Corps.

Other units, including tank forces, had left during the summer but an IFOR spokesman in Tuzla said that had been classified as "restructuring," not as redeployment. Tuzla airbase in northern Bosnia is the headquarters of the U.S. force.

Covering the pullout

The 5,000 U.S. soldiers due to arrive in Bosnia over the next six weeks will join 2,500 soldiers already in place to make up the forces that will cover IFOR's withdrawal.

The new troops, mainly from the 1st Infantry Division, will also help to maintain a "safe and secure environment" for the postponed municipal elections now scheduled for late November, a statement from the U.S. Army said Tuesday.

The U.S. pullout date has already been delayed due to the postponement. The bulk of U.S. forces are due to leave by February with only the smaller "covering force" scheduled to stay until March.

IFOR's mandate runs out on December 20. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called Friday for the extension of an international military force in Bosnia, citing continued security problems.

In related developments Wednesday:

Unauthorized weapons, including mortars, missiles and armored vehicles, were confiscated from Serb and Croat forces, a NATO spokesman said. A Czech peacekeeping patrol made the seizure near the village of Pucari in Bosnian Serb territory, he said.
The mayor of Tuzla said German plans to forcibly repatriate thousands of refugees from former Yugoslavia will worsen tensions in Bosnia. Speaking in Bonn, Selim Beslagic appealed to German states to reconsider their decision to start the compulsory return of some of the 320,000 refugees now living in Germany, warning that Bosnia could not cope with a flood of refugees.
Britain's Princess Anne visited the town of Krupa na Vrbasu, in the northern part of Bosnia under Bosnian Serb control, to talk to British troops and tour a school they built.

Reuters contributed to this report.