Wrangling in Oslo

Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman Ingvar Havnen seemed embarrassed on Tuesday, June 11 at 13:00 when he told reporters that there was a short delay in the signing ceremony for the arms control agreement. He said the delay was over a formal question: the Bosnians refused to sign the document because it treats the Bosnian Serb Republic as a state/party and not a Bosnian entity.

The Norwegians said they don't understand what this is about since the agreement uses the same wording that was used in Dayton and which no one objected to there.

The weaponry whose numbers will be limited under the agreement are: tanks, armored combat vehicles, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters. The agreement covers Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the FRY and includes protocols on reducing weapons systems, reclassifying combat aircraft into training planes, categorizing combat and attack helicopters, exchanging information, existing weapons types, inspections and setting up a sub-regional consultative commission.

The sides kept to the basic principles defined in Dayton - a stable military balance based on the lowest level of weaponry - and agreed on the following limits at their talks in Vienna: the Yugoslav Army is allowed to have 1,000 tanks, 700 armored combat vehicles, 3,000 artillery pieces, 150 combat aircraft and 50 attack helicopters. Croatia and Bosnia have equal limits, i.e. 400 tanks, 280 armored combat vehicles, 1,200 artillery pieces, 60 combat aircraft and 20 attack helicopters. The numbers for Bosnia are shared by the Moslem-Croat Federation and Bosnian Serb Republic so the Federation has the right to 267 tanks, 186 armored combat vehicles, 800 artillery pieces, 40 combat aircraft and 13 attack helicopters. The BSA gets the rest: 133 tanks, 94 armored combat vehicles, 400 artillery pieces, 20 combat aircraft and seven attack helicopters.

The BSA is going to have to give up the most. Figures published by former FRY President Dobrica Cosic in 1992 show that the JNA left Karadzic 531 tanks, hundreds of combat vehicles, four missile divisions (whatever that means), 87 multiple rocket launchers, 5,000 mortars (120 and 82mm), an unknown amount of artillery, 24 combat aircraft and 20 helicopters of all kinds. Most of those arms are aging, broken down or destroyed since the BSA has a huge problem with the maintenance of modern or complex weapons systems. BSA artillery fired as much as they liked, destroying their own weapons. So the reductions should not be too difficult to bear.

From the VJ's point of view the situation is even better: the VJ, like the JNA before it, is one of the bigger military museums since it preserved large amounts of hopelessly antiquated weapons. The agreement will allow the VJ to get rid of its excess baggage painlessly and modernize since the agreement does not ban arms exports under the limits it set. General Radosav Martinovic, assistant chief of staff for operational duties, told Podgorica magazine Polis: "The solutions, regardless of the model that will come out of the Vienna talks, can't have a serious negative effect on our defence capabilities... We are being careful not to step into possible traps and we certainly won't leave ourselves in an unfavorable position. The possible lowering of quantity will be replaced with higher quality." Asked if the VJ should reduce its potentials a lot, Martinovic said: "No. The reduction has many modalities. If we establish that we now have a surplus in regard to the agreement signed by state officials we'll see if something can be destroyed or if the purpose of some things can be changed from military to civilian use."

Commentators mocked the statement but the agreement envisages the conversion of combat vehicles into ambulances or police vehicles which are not subject to the limits and the conversion of combat aircraft and helicopters into unarmed multi-purpose aircraft. But, tanks and artillery pieces cannot be converted; they have to be sold to someone stupid enough to buy them or cut them up for scrap. Miroslav Lazanski predicted that the recycling of a tank into steel will cost about 15,000 DEM. The Germans, when faced with a surplus of Leopard 1 tanks which they were prevented by their own laws from selling figured out that the easiest thing to do was build a factory to cut them up and melt them down.

The Vienna agreement allows that sale of surplus weaponry to buyers outside the region but that won't bring profits since it's all outdated technology that no one wants. The simplest solution, under the agreement, is to immobilize them and display them in public, use them for target practice or conserve them in special locations.

Interestingly, the signatories also oblige themselves not to withdraw from the agreement in 1996-97. After that, the sides can withdraw if "they conclude that events have taken place in regard to the agreement that endanger their interests". In that case they have to announce the intention to withdraw two months earlier and list the events.

The agreement, if singed and respected, has every chance of lowering tension in the Balkans; soldiers will relax along with civilians; arms suppliers will go to work because this will obviously lead to modernization in the Balkan armies and the Dayton mediators will pat each other's back.