U.K. to withdraw troops from Bosnia

U.K. to withdraw troops from Bosnia

His visit coincided with a warning from Prime Minister Tony Blair, at Nato's Latvian summit in Riga, that the alliance needs to do more to underpin "critical" combat operations in Afghanistan.

Mr Blair gave a guarded welcome to a relaxation of national rules of engagement to allow French, German, Spanish, and Italian troops to reinforce the UK, Canadian and American units fighting Taliban insurgents in Helmand province in an emergency.

But he added that gaps remained in capabilities available to commanders on the ground in what was "Nato's absolutely critical mission".
The bottom line after two days of talks is that the forces bearing the brunt of the action and sustaining 90% of the casualties in Helmand and Kandahar are still short of the 2500 fighting troops needed.

Only the Dutch and the Romanians have agreed to allow their men to fight alongside their British and Canadian allies without restriction.
The UK contingent in Bosnia includes 330 men from the Welsh Guards at Banja Luka, engineering and logistics detachments and a 50-strong headquarters team in Sarajevo, the capital.

Mr Ingram's visit follows a statement by Defence Secretary Des Browne this week that the garrison in southern Iraq could be reduced "by thousands" next year.

Military insiders say the plan is to halve the 7200-man force and pull the rest back to a brigade-sized base near Basra.

Although the Ministry of Defence denies the army is overstretched, the strain of rolling six-month deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan – which need almost 14,000 soldiers a time – has left the army short of manpower for other tasks and hit training plans.

It has also stretched the RAF's ability to keep two substantial long-range commitments supplied with a fleet of ageing and breakdown-prone aircraft.

Britain has 900 soldiers in the Balkans, split between Bosnia and Kosovo, where 200 remain to keep a fragile peace in the breakaway province.
UK troops have had a presence in Bosnia for a decade and in Kosovo since 1999 after ethnic wars tore apart the former Yugoslavia between1991 and 1995.

The government's quest to find even 700 soldiers from the Balkan commitment underlines the desperate manpower shortage in an army which has shrunk to fewer than 100,000, and faces an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan and a long-term commitment to Iraq.

Both missions are likely to last a decade and will continue to soak up front-line units on six-month tours.