HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING ON UNITED NATIONS MISSION IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

With the upcoming closure of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), that Mission would enter the history books as the "most extensive police reform and restructuring mission in the history of the United Nations," Jacques Klein told correspondents today at a Headquarters press briefing.

Having briefed the Security Council yesterday on the successful completion of UNMIBH's mandate, Mr. Klein, the Secretary-General's Special Representative and Coordinator of United Nations operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that some 13,000 police officers from 43 countries had served with UNMIBH in what was a truly multinational effort.

Listing the Mission's achievements, he said that a force of some     44,000 pre-war policemen had been reduced to fewer than 16,000.  That was why UNMIBH had been the largest police restructuring operation in history.  In the former regime, one did not go to the police because the police had been the problem.  They had been the agents of State terror.  The 16,000 policemen now in the country had been "vetted" and trained in human rights, forensics, traffic management and crime scene investigation.  The international community had provided some $16 million for equipment, including vehicles, uniforms and new police stations.

He said that UNMIBH had also raised the level of policing by women to more than 3 per cent.  While they had a long way to go to reach the European norm of some 10 per cent, the Mission had started from a base of zero.  Almost one third of each class entering police academies were women.  Another achievement was the establishment of a State border service.  While in the past Bosnia and Herzegovina had not needed defined borders, today the border of some        1,560 kilometres and 432 entry points was secure.

Illegal immigration had also been reduced by 95 per cent, from about 35,000 in 2000 to less than 700 in 2002, Mr. Klein continued.  Other achievements included State-level law enforcement institutions and a comprehensive programme on trafficking.  UNMIBH had carried out some 832 raids, closed 152 bars and repatriated over 550 women.  In addition, 100 traffickers have been convicted, 52 court cases were pending and 19 cases were ongoing.

UNMIBH had also become a contributor to other United Nations peacekeeping missions, Mr. Klein said.  The fact that police officers and military observers from Bosnia and Herzegovina were serving in Timor-Leste, Ethiopia-Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo demonstrated that the country was not only the recipient of international aid, but also willing to contribute.

Clearly formulated goals had contributed to the Mission's successful completion, he said.  The Secretary-General had laid out directions and guidelines when Mr. Klein assumed leadership of the Mission in August 1999.  The

goal, he said, was a modern, democratic police force fit for Europe.  Community crime in Bosnia and Herzegovina was among the lowest in Europe.  While national crime continued to be a problem, in terms of individual community policing, crime was very low.

"The foundations are now in place for a modern, democratic, non-political police force,” Mr. Klein said.  The next step, which the new High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, would be focusing on, was the long-term establishment of the rule of law.  With his leadership, the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) would be able to carry on the tasks before it.  While UNMIBH's mandate had included training, equipping and monitoring, the EUPM would simply monitor the new police force in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Asked why it was the right time to conclude the Mission, Mr. Klein said that UNMIBH had a "niche" mandate and was responsible for police reform and restructuring.  As the Mission came to a conclusion, it was certifying individual ministries of interior and police stations to ensure that they met European standards.  Part of the Mission's planning included a time-frame of some two to three years to train and equip police.  Two and a half years later, the Mission had completed its mandate.  That did not mean, however, that all of Bosnia and Herzegovina was “fixed”.  Three armies existed in one State, and the economy was in “rather sorry” shape.  Dealing with that had not been part of the Mission's mandate, however.  Moreover, the United Nations had not been invited to Dayton and had joined the police operation rather “late in the game”.

Asked to comment on the relationship between the economy and the trafficking of women, he said that women were not being trafficked from Bosnia, but were coming in from Eastern Europe.  As long as the economies in Eastern Europe remained as they were, the problem would never be solved.  The Mission had carried out multiple raids of Bosnia and Herzegovina's 240 bars and dance halls.  One hundred and fifty-two bars had been closed and some 2,200 women had been interviewed.  The tragedy was that when a bar was raided, some of the women chose to leave, while others chose to stay.  The UNMIBH did not have an executive mandate and could not arrest anyone.  The International Police Task Force (IPTF) simply accompanied the local police and ensured that the standards of modern policing were met.  Until the economies of Eastern Europe improved, the problem would remain.

There had been no visa regime when the Mission had arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he added.  Anyone could enter Bosnia for a period of 90 days before traveling on to Europe.  It now had a visa regime, a deportation and denaturalization law, and a border control structure that worked.  The long-term issue of the economy was very real and was an Eastern European problem.

The domestic economy had a different characterization and was a "rule of law" issue, he said.  In any modern society, law was the oil that lubricated the society.  That was why he believed that Lord Ashdown had set the right priority.  While UNMIBH had done an excellent job with the police force, establishing the rule of law -- which was not part of the United Nations mandate -- needed to be done quickly.

Asked to assess the level of serious crimes, Mr. Klein repeated that community crime rates in Bosnia and Herzegovina were low.  "Our crime is the old kind," he said.  Much of Yugoslavia's disintegration had less to do with ethnicity, nationalism or religion than with party elites’ seizing power and privatizing State enterprises for personal gain.  Some 82 per cent of the victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina were civilians.  It had not been a war between armies but between "paramilitary thugs”.  During the war, all sides had created logistics infrastructures to buy weapons around Europe and the world to avoid sanctions.  After the war, many of those were converted into civilian Mafia infrastructures.

What were the advantages of narrowly defined mandates, a correspondent asked.  Mr. Klein said the ideal model had been the United Nations Transitional Administration in Eastern Slovenia, which had also fielded United Nations military observers, international peace task force officers and civilians under a single chief of mission.  The UNMIBH was the first mission to lay out a mandate implementation plan.  The other missions were open-ended.  The Stabilization Force (SFOR) had been trapped because of Radovan Karadzic, and could not leave Bosnia and Herzegovina until he was captured.  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was now working on human rights and democratization.  A single, clear definition of the role of the international community should have been created in 1996.

While Mr. Klein could not say know how much foreign aid had come into Bosnia and Herzegovina, he did know that approximately $5,000 had been spent per citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  There had never been a correlation between economic assistance and a political plan, however.

Rapid movement and engagement were critical, he said.  Some 230,000 people had been killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last decade of the twentieth century in South-central Europe.  In the context of the democratic States of modern Europe, that should have never happened.  But there had been a failure to appreciate the need to move quickly.

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