Tuesday, Nov 23, 2004
E.U. to set up rapid reaction forces
By David Gow
BRUSSELS, NOV. 22. The European Defence Ministers are to give their approval later today to the formation of up to 10 rapid reaction forces, known as battlegroups, for deployment in international crisis regions such as Sudan and the Ivory Coast from as early as next year.
The decision, which will be endorsed at a joint meeting with Foreign Ministers, is seen as a substantial change in Europe's equally vaunted and derided security and defence policy.
Next week the Bosnian peacekeeping mission SFOR, operated by NATO, will be transferred to the E.U.-controlled Eufor. With a strength of 7,000, it will be the biggest overseas deployment by combined European forces to date. The battlegroups will each have 1,500 soldiers and the programme is due for completion by 2007.
It is understood that the 25 Defence Ministers see Africa as the most likely theatre for the battlegroups, where they are expected to supplement the peacekeeping and policing missions increasingly undertaken by the African Union.
Significant increase
The A.U. is sending up to 4,000 soldiers to the Darfur region of Sudan, a significant increase in its force initially protecting the A.U. representatives trying to monitor the often broken ceasefire between the Arab Janjaweed militias, backed by government forces, and two rebel forces drawn from black African tribes.
Massacres and rapes continue in the region, where more than 1.5 million persons have been driven from their homes and more than 70,000 are estimated to have died. The U.S. has declared the conflict genocidal.
British officials think the battlegroups could also work alongside A.U. forces in Ivory Coast, where France already has a peacekeeping force and civil war has recently erupted again.
The first two will be British-and French-led forces available in the first half of next year.
The Italians promise one in the second half of the year. The Swedes and Finns are also planning a group in which Norway will take part, even though it does not belong to the E.U.
Serious debate
There is a serious debate in Oslo about whether it is compatible with the Constitution.
- © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.