US Foreign Policy Team Gets Rough Ride on Iraq

By David Storey

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - President Clinton's top foreign policy team had a rough ride in the
American heartland Wednesday when it sought to rally support for a possible military strike on Iraq.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's normally steely composure was jolted when anti-war
demonstrators, yelling from an upper tier of a university gymnasium, drowned her out as she laid out
U.S. policy before 6,000 people in a televised meeting.

"One, two, three, four, we don't want your racist war," chanted the knot of young people among the
crowd in the echoing gym at Ohio State University.

Similar outbursts greeted Defense Secretary William Cohen and Clinton's national security adviser
Sandy Berger as they set out the U.S. stand that unless Iraqi President Saddam Hussein opens
suspected weapons sites to U.N. inspection he will be hit by an American strike.

Apart from the disruptions -- two hecklers were forcibly ejected -- any hopes the team had of an
uplifting support rally were quickly dispelled as they faced a battery of penetrating questions that
revealed deep suspicion about the policy.

"Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters here," Albright began. She, Cohen
and Berger reiterated U.S. determination not to allow Saddam to build up chemical and biological
weapons stocks and threaten his neighbors.

The meeting, carried live to viewers around the world, including Baghdad, by CNN International,
was hastily organized as the days ticked down toward possible attack.

The United States has gathered warships and warplanes in the Gulf, ready to strike if Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein does not give U.N. inspectors full access to all sites.

Although the loudest noise was from the protesters, there was also solid support in the hall for the
U.S. stand and scattered calls for Washington to go further than air strikes and overthrow Saddam
himself.

One U.S. soldier called from Germany into the live show and declared: "If a soldier's life has to be
lost, let it be mine."

Albright declared: "Our policy is to contain him (Saddam). That is what we are trying to do."

But despite the sober attitude of many in the crowd, it was the protesters who stole the show, with
chants and banners evocative of anti-Vietnam War campus demonstrations.

One angry questioner denounced plans to drop bombs on Iraq, saying Iraqi's rights should be
respected. "I am surprised that people find it necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein,"
Albright responded archly.

One protester, Chad Kister from Athens, Ohio, said he believed CNN, which staged the meeting,
had stacked the program to hold down dissent. "There are a lot more ways of settling this than going
to war," he said.

State Department spokesman James Rubin tried to play down the critical tone of the meeting. "They
enjoyed it... They came away feeling that the overwhelming majority of the audience was very
supportive of the goals of the administration," he said.

Defense Secretary Cohen seemed to warm to the debate. "We are fighting for the right to voice our
opinion. This is a celebration of democracy," he told the meeting.

But Ohio Republican congressman John Boehner, chairman of the House Republican Conference,
called the town hall meeting "an unmitigated disaster."

"Today the Clinton administration learned the hard way that what works so well on the campaign
trail doesn't necessarily work at all in matters of national security," Boehner said.

"If the Clinton administration's goal was to send a message to Saddam via CNN, this was an
unmitigated disaster. This is a matter of global security and international peace, and they turned it into
the Oprah Winfrey show. Not surprisingly, it didn't work," he added.

Earlier Wednesday, the United States said it doubted a trip to Baghdad by U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan would yield a breakthrough in the standoff over inspections.

U.S. officials said Washington could, however, accept a proposal that diplomats from U.N. Security
Council member countries accompany arms inspectors on their search for banned weapons at
sensitive "presidential sites" in Iraq.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry, asked at his daily briefing if the White House was
optimistic that Annan could win a breakthrough during his visit later this week, said: "No. But at the
same point it is important to make this effort."

NATO: Force Staying in Bosnia After June

By Ian Geoghegan

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO-led troops will stay on in Bosnia after their current
mandate runs out in June but troop numbers could be cut significantly after elections in September,
NATO sources said Wednesday.

They said the NATO Council, comprising ambassadors from the 16 member countries, provisionally
agreed to keep the Stabilization Force (SFOR) of peacekeeping troops at current levels of around
34,000 after the existing mandate expires June 30.

"A preliminary decision has been taken. The 16 ambassadors agreed today on a follow-on force,"
one North Atlantic Treaty Organization source said.

A formal decision was to be announced Friday after the military alliance had had a chance to consult
its partners, including Russia, which currently have troops on the ground in Bosnia.

The size of the force will be reviewed after Bosnia's presidential and parliamentary elections due in
September, the sources said, with likely "significant" reductions in troop numbers if the still fragile
political and security climate permitted.

"There is going to be a substantial presence in Bosnia of a follow-on mission after the current
mandate finishes, with a revision after the elections that could lead to an important reduction if the
security environment allows," they said.

That could reduce the number of soldiers on the ground to 20,000-25,000, diplomats said.

But NATO stressed that any post-election reduction was by no means automatic.

On the one hand it is determined to show Bosnia's authorities, and public opinion within some of its
own member states, that its commitment to peacekeeping in the region is not open-ended.

On the other, it does not want to risk a return to nationalist warfare among Muslims, Serbs and
Croats by walking away from Bosnia too soon.

The United States has warned for months that a mass scaling back of SFOR numbers in Bosnia
could put the region on a slippery slope back down into war.

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana also said on a trip to Washington last week that, while he
saw scope for trimming SFOR numbers later this year, there were still potential trouble spots where
conflict could be re-ignited.

There remain geographic pockets that are hotly disputed between Serb, Muslim and Croat
communities, and the return of people displaced by the 1992-95 war could trigger renewed clashes
without a NATO presence.

The new force will lay heavy emphasis on returning refugees to former homes in areas now ruled by
erstwhile war enemies -- one of the major unfulfilled provisions of Bosnia's 1995 peace treaty.

Bosnia is now divided into autonomous Muslim-Croat and Serb entities. But even the Muslim-Croat
federation is effectively split into Muslim- and Croat-dominated zones.

SFOR is also expected to continue its current approach to indicted war criminals -- arresting them if
encountered in the normal course of duty, but not actively hunting them down.

The follow-on force will keep the SFOR tag, despite some NATO members' preference for a
change to CFOR, standing for Consolidation Force.

"Most countries supported keeping the same name...for practical and political reasons," a NATO
source said.

NATO insiders had projected the cost of changing the force's name at over $1 million and thousands
of man hours, re-painting the logo on thousands of military vehicles and on publications.

The ambassadors' decision will be put to military commanders Friday so that they can start drawing
up operational plans for the new force to be submitted by the end of April.

Once approved, that plan would then be sent to the United Nations Security Council for a new
resolution extending SFOR's current mandate, the sources added.

There was also broad agreement that specialized units trained and experienced in public order
control, like French gendarmes or British regiments which have worked alongside police in Northern
Ireland, should figure in the peacekeeping force.

SFOR is now made up mostly of combat troops.

The decision is part of the alliance's plans for the next phase of implementation of the Dayton peace
accords that ended the three-and-a-half-year conflict involving Muslims, Serbs and Croats in
Bosnia.

The United States has the greatest presence within the current SFOR, with more than 8,500 troops,
followed by Britain, France and Germany and some two dozen other partners.