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President Clinton has ordered 8,500 troops to Bosnia as part of a 30,000 "follow-up force" that will stay until June, 1998. Secretary of Defense William Perry discusses the Clinton Administration's decision to extend the presence of NATO and U.S. troops in Bosnia past the December deadline set by the President last year. He also talks about the involvement in the Zaire peacekeeping mission in Zaire and what it means for the American military.ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being with us.
WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: It's good to be here, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Beginning with Bosnia, the IFOR, the implementation force, consisted of around 60,000 troops, of which 20,000 were Americans. How big will the new force be, and how many will be American?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: The new force, which we're calling the Stabilization Force, or S-Force for short, will be slightly larger than half of the original IFOR. It will be about 31,000 NATO troops and partner troops. Of those, there will be 8,500 Americans, which is slightly less than half of the original American force.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Will it be a brand new force, or will some of the troops either from IFOR or from the cover force that's there now--um--troops have gone in just recently to help cover the removal--the withdrawal of the IFOR troops--will any of those stay?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: In the case of the American troops, all of the original troops that went in a year ago, nearly a year ago, will be going back to the bases, have already gone back to the bases, and so the troops that are going to be in there in early 1997, will all be new, either from the covering force which has gone in the last month or so, or in replacement of the cover force.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what's the nature of the force? How will it be different from IFOR? Will it have more or less armor, fewer or more police?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: It will be--it will have different tasks, first of all. IFOR had a very difficult task going into the country of separating the warring forces, forcing the warring factions to go back to the barracks and cantonments, and in all of these very specific tasks, presume that there might be some sort of military conflict, so we went in armed for that. We went in not only with armored personnel carriers but with tanks. We very formidable and intimidating force. All of those missions are done now. What requires to be done in the future is the Stabilization force, maintaining a security environment of the country. This can be done still with a military force, a military force prepared for conflict if necessary, but it will not be as heavily armed, it will not have the same need for tanks, so it will be a mechanized infantry force instead.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What will it do mostly? How would you describe what it will do specifically--on refugees? Take refugees as an example.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: Yes. Well, it will--its primary mission is to present--prevent a resumption of the war. It's a deterrence mission.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Are you worried a war would resume if it didn't stay, by the way?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: Yes. If we did not stay. We do not believe that two--that the armies are going to simply form up to fight again, but if you look at the kind of incidents, the civil conflict and violence that's occurred, for example, in the last week, our concern is that without a military presence, they would get out of control and maybe escalate into a war, and that's why we require the physical presence, so a major part of the deterrence mission is being there, having a physical presence there, and when a conflict arises that one particular village, being able to get there quickly with an opposing and impressive military force. That not only takes the force; it takes very good discipline on the part of the NATO troops, the American troops, to be sure that they handle this properly, so they do not use unnecessary violence.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And specifically other things that it will do?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: It has a task also of providing selective--I'd emphasize the word selective support of the civilian organizations that are there to perform a whole host of other things. We believe that the IFOR mission has been successfully completed. All of the tasks that were spelled out in the military annex to the Dayton agreement have been completed, and so we say IFOR was done, it was a great success, but the Dayton agreement also spelled out a whole set of civil activities. Refugee resettling, which you mentioned, was one of them, conducting the elections was one. Those tasks--many of them still remain to be done, and the task of this new force, the Stabilization Force, is to provide a security environment which facilitates those tasks, which permits those tasks to be done, and in a selective way supporting them when necessary.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When did you realize that those non-military tasks were not being accomplished as quickly as you had hoped?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: That became--that was becoming reasonably clear about the time of the national elections a few months ago. I should say the evidence was building up during the year, but it began to be unmistakably clear in September, October time frame.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And is that when you began planning for this new force?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: Yes, yes, the--conceptually we were planning for it. We always understood that not only did our President have to make a decision, which he only just made last night, but that the other nations, NATO, had to participate with this too. And, in fact, the NATO decision has not yet been finally taken. That will occur next week. All of our discussion anticipates that NATO will make a decision along the lines that President Clinton announced today.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As you know, your critics in Congress and elsewhere are saying that the administration's credibility is at stake here, because you and other people went to Congress and said this can be done in a year; we know it can be done in a year. How do you respond to that criticism?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: I respond that the credibility of any of us ought to be judged not on one isolated assessment but on the whole assessment that we made. I testified to the Congress many, many times on this issue. I gave many, many interviews on it, and the assessment that was being made included most importantly what kind of a threat we were facing in Bosnia, what kind of military forces it would take to deal with that--how to properly train those forces--whether we could send them in there and conduct this mission without substantial casualties--all of those were very important and substantial debates, and in my judgment, we've got nearly all of those right in our assessment, in our judgment. The one judgment, in particular the judgment that we conduct all these military missions spelled out in the annex in 12 months was right, so that was right but what was not right was the belief that if we could conduct all of these missions, it would then be all right to leave at that point. And what was--what we failed--what I failed to assess properly at that time was the importance of having the civil functions, which were going on in parallel, getting done in the same time frame, they have lagged behind the military functions. And so my judgment now is that we need to provide more time for those civil functions to get conducted before we can safely leave the country. And that's why I recommended to the President that he agreed to keep--to put a new force in there for another actually 18 months is what we have proposed.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There's so much tension still in the country you can see it most vividly in the different skirmishes over refugees trying to return, where Bosnian Muslims try to return and Bosnian Serbs this week wouldn't let them. What makes you think that these kinds of tensions will be lessened in 18 months? Why--isn't it possible that foreign troops will have to be there indefinitely?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: What is fundamentally important is that the peace be maintained, first of all, through next spring, where we see a danger of a war resuming again, and it's going to require military forces there to guarantee that. But the military forces in and of themselves cannot guarantee peace. They can provide the peaceful environment as long as they're there, but for this to be a long-term solution, the civil functions that I talked about, most importantly economic reconstruction must be accelerated. They must be moving along in parallel. They are what can create the conditions for peace, and all our military function can do is provide the environment which allows them to be done. My best judgment is that if we can sustain this peaceful environment, a secure environment for another year, year and a half, and if we can accelerate the introduction--and this is primarily Europeans now, introduction--accelerate the introduction of these civil activities, then the conditions for peace will be created. Economic reconstruction is number one on the list.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You hope that people will have a stake in peace, is that your--
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: They have to have a stake in peace. They have to be able to see the future. The employment rate in Bosnia now is only 10 percent and by official statistics--not unemployment rate but the employment rate--and so obviously they have to do something to get their economy moving to give people a stake in the country, a stake in peace.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay, now shifting regions now to Central Africa. Describe for us the makeup and the mission of U.S. troops that the President wants to send and has said he's agreed in principle to send to Central Africa.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: The first point to make is that it is a multinational force that is being proposed, a force which consists--it would consist of a force from six or seven different nations. Canada has offered to lead the multinational force. We would be one of those six or seven nations. The total force--multinational force--would be about 10,000 troops. A large number of them would be located at the Goma airfield and--around that.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In Zaire.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: In Zaire. In Eastern Zaire--more of them than would be located at the Bukavu airfield, which is also in Eastern Zaire, seven miles South of Goma. Those are the two greatest concentration of refugee camps now. In addition to that, and of those forces, about 1,000 would be Americans located in and around the Goma airfield, and their job would be to operate the Goma airfield, to provide--and to provide a security cordon from Goma into Rwanda. It's only a few miles long, but it provides a safe passage then for the refugees going from Zaire into their homeland, Rwanda. Now, in addition to that, the United States would be providing another few thousand logistics troops. They would not be located in the refugee area. They would be located in the intermediate air bases which would be used to supply the whole operation.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In other countries.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: It would be in Rwanda, for example, in Kigali, it would be in Uganda, it would be in Kenya. So these intermediate air bases would be the supply points for the entire operation that was being conducted.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Apparently, tens--hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as three hundred and fifty thousand refugees are moving now from a camp in Zaire into Rwanda. Does this change the plans for this mission at all? How can you fix your plans with such rapidly changing circumstances?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: This is a very hopeful sign, but it's also very preliminary, and we're not in a position to modify the plans based on the input we've gotten so far. We do have a military assessment team now in Rwanda that will be on their way to Goma. They should be able to make a firsthand assessment of where the refugees are, where they're heading, what the prospects for the future are. That will give us perhaps some basis for modifying the plans which are now coming together.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Specifically, the troops going to the airport are trying to do what, and who controls the Goma airport right now? Let's just start with Goma.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: The Goma airport is controlled at the moment by a rebel faction. There are Tutsis, and they--uh--before we could conduct this mission I talk about, we would have to have their acquiescence to our going into the Goma airfield. We have not planned an assault on the airfield, a forceful entry into the airfield, so we would need the acquiescence of the rebel forces occupying the airfield, the acquiescence and cooperation of the Zairean government, and of the Rwandan government. We think those will be forthcoming. But while this military assessment team is out getting the situation on the ground, we have diplomatic teams also obtaining those necessary approvals. Those are--our agreement--President Clinton's agreement to participate was conditional on getting those--that cooperation.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sen. Dan Coats said yesterday after meeting with you that the “administration is acting as if the memories and lessons of Somalia have been forgotten.” Critics say that you're just going to get U.S. troops involved in another, uh, inter-factional war that could lead to deaths. How do you respond to that criticism?
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: We have not forgotten Somalia--and would not. I tend to relate this situation more like what I would call Goma One, when we sent a relief force into the same spot, the Goma refugee area, two years ago. That relief force--that was an American relief force that was sent in there, somewhat under a thousand members of the U.S. army went into provide pure water for the refugees to stop a cholera epidemic. That was done in about a month's time. It was--took a thousand American troops. It was quite successful. We had no casualties from that, and when the mission was done, we left. We envision this as a larger version of that same mission. I would hasten to add, though, that this mission, in fact, no--none of these deployed missions that we send the troops on are without risk. None of them are without risk, so we do see a risk here. We do not see an undue risk attendant with this operation, and our forces that go in there will go in with very substantial ability to protect themselves.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being with us.
SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: Thank you, Elizabeth. Good to talk to you.
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