Troop Withdrawal

Citing an unnamed European diplomat, business daily Financial Times on Friday said Germany was to pull its troops out of Bosnia after the European Union said it was scaling down peacekeepers from 6,500 to around 2,500 in the Balkan nation.

"The decisions for force transition are still in progress," the EU diplomat was quoted by the Financial Times. "But the Germans are on the way out," he said.

The newspaper did not indicate how many of the troops would be withdrawn. And Berlin is yet to make a formal statement regarding its plans in Bosnia.

The report of possible German withdrawal came only one day after British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram announced to the lower House of Commons that Britain would withdraw almost all of its 600 troops from the country.

Improved security

Meanwhile, EU defense ministers, who started a two-day informal meeting in Wiesbaden on Thursday brought forward a move to cut EU troop numbers in Bosnia to around 2,500 this year from 6,500 now, as security in the former hotspot improves.

"As a first step, we want to withdraw around 3,500 soldiers, then watch what happens before we move on," said German Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung, who hosted the gathering.

In December, EU foreign ministers noted that security in Bosnia had evolved enough to permit them to "decide in principle on a transition" to lower troop numbers.

"The situation in Bosnia is way better. Security is going very well," said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, but he added: "Politically there are still a lot of things to do."

Cutting the size of EUFOR in Bosnia will free up forces for use elsewhere as peacekeeping and security operations abound.

Extended mandate

The international community, however, is still concerned about the developments in the former Yugoslav republic.

Earlier this week, the steering board of the international Peace Implementation Council (PIC) decided in Brussels that the office of the High Representative and Special EU Representative -- an ad hoc international institution responsible for overseeing implementation of civilian aspects of the peace accord in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- "will remain in place and continue to carry out its mandate under the Dayton Peace Agreement," for another year.

That means that Germany's Christian Schwarz-Schilling, who took over as High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina from Britain's Paddy Ashdown in January will stay in office until at least June, 30 2008.

That extension of Schwarz-Schilling's mandate represented a U-turn by the PIC, which guides the 1995 Dayton peace process, as last year it had announced the post would be scrapped in June 2007, and the entire running of the country handed over to local politicians.

But a slowing up of the reform process and a failure to adopt agreed constitutional amendments has led the international community to think again.

Outstanding concerns

The EU Commission has stressed the need to address the outstanding concerns before progress can be made by Bosnia and Herzegovina towards a Stability and Association Agreement with the European Union, a necessary precursor to eventual membership.

Those requirements include the reform of the police force, currently split between the two entities which make up Bosnia and Herzegovina, the (Serb) Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

Bosnia is also expected to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to secure the arrests of war crimes suspects involved in the country's 1992-95 war, which claimed more than 200,000 lives.

German presence in Bosnia

850 German soldiers, who are currently stationed in Bosnia, are serving as part of the EU force (EUFOR).

The EU launched a military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 2004 following the decision by NATO to end its peacekeeping mission in the country after nine years. Code-named Althea, the mission has seen 7,000 troops deployed under EU command in a bid to ensure continuous stability in a country devastated by war.

For decades after World War II, the prospect of German soldiers being stationed in any foreign country was taboo. But since reunification, the German military has been called upon increasingly to contribute troops to United Nations or NATO-sponsored operations abroad.

There are some fears that Germany's army of 245,000 is overstretched, although only a relatively small percentage are engaged in foreign peacekeeping missions. There are some 9,000 soldiers on foreign missions, including 2,800 soldiers in Afghanistan, 2,844 in Kosovo and 750 in Congo.