JOINT PEACEKEEPING COMMAND PROPOSED.

President Boris Yeltsin will propose a joint, NATO-Russian peacekeeping force for Bosnia under rotating NATO and Russian command, when he speaks at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in New York in late October, according to a statement by Defense Minister Pavel Grachev. Grachev categorically ruled out Russian troops serving under a NATO command, one of the options on which the western alliance is now working. "The proposal will be to carry out this peacekeeping action not just under NATO command but to create a joint command of NATO and Russia, with first a NATO general and then a Russian general in charge," Grachev told journalists. (1)

NATO military and political planners are now drawing up a blueprint for the 60,000-strong force and hope to finish by the end of the month. Though planners have made provision for non-NATO states to take part, they envisage a force solely under NATO command and control. Yeltsin’s proposal to subordinate U.S. military forces to Russian command and control almost certainly will be viewed as a non-starter by U.S. political and military leaders, to say nothing of the U.S. Congress.

Grachev Outlines Hardline Foreign Policy.