EUFOR

EUFOR or European Union Force is the current international military force in Bosnia and Herzegovina that oversees the military implementation of the Dayton Agreement. It replaced the NATO-led SFOR on the 2nd of December 2004. (The civilian implementation lies on the Office of High Representative)

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EUFOR has around 7,000 personnel from 33 countries. They mostly come from the countries of European Union, which is the main organizer and controls the whole operation (codenamed Althea). There are additional troops from other European countries and also some from Canada and elsewhere. This is the biggest purely European military operation to the day (2004).

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EUFOR's commander is currently the British Major-General David Leakey. The forces are subordinate to the EU via a strategic level headquarters established at NATO's Headquarters Allied Command Operations, under the deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander, British General Sir John Reith. Although both of these officers are British, they operate in an international capacity on behalf of the EU.

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The EUFOR will assume all the missions of the SFOR, but the chase for war criminals, notably Radovan Karad?i?, former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and Ratko Mladi?, their former military leader, will be a mission for both the EU and NATO.

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The EUFOR will also have police duties (The Times) against organised crime, which is believed to be linked to war criminals. The EUFOR will collaborate with the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia (EUPM) and with the Bosnian police.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H; locally: Bosna i Hercegovina/????? ? ???????????) is a triangular mountainous country in the western Balkans with an estimated population of about 4,000,000 people. The country is the homeland of its three constitutional peoples; Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, and is famou...

Dayton Agreement: The Dayton Agreement or Dayton Accords is the name given to the agreement at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to end the war in the former Yugoslavia that had gone on for the previous three years, in particular the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It marked the first occasion when t...

NATO: :This Wikipedia article uses European English spelling because of NATO's historical use of this style as a standard. NATO is also an acronym for the National Association of Theatre Owners....