[Serbian]

"EUFOR to leave at end of year"
9 July 2009 | 11:14 | Source: Tanjug

BERLIN -- German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung says that a decision on closing the EU peacekeeping mission to Bosnia is likely to be taken by the end of the year.

Jung said that troop numbers in Kosovo would also be cut, if the situation allowed. “We find ourselves before the final step of scaling down troops in Bosnia,” he said on a visit to a barracks near Darmstadt, at the beginning of a summer tour of German soldiers.

The minister said that the condition for ending the EUFOR mission was a declaration at EU level that the local security forces were in a position to guarantee the country’s stability.

The German mission, which has been in Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1995, had at its peak a contingent of 3,000 troops, of which only 120 remain today in the former Yugoslav republic.

As far as Kosovo is concerned, Jung said that the international contingent could be cut from 14,000 to 10,000 troops by the end of the year.

The minister said in Brussels in mid-June that he expected a major reduction in international troop numbers in the province.

German media state that there are some 2,000 German troops stationed in Kosovo currently, making it the country’s biggest peacekeeping mission after Afghanistan

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