Staff and financial resources were made available to enable the OSCE to send missions into European nations to mediate disputes, monitor elections and conduct other activities designed to prevent conflict.

Today, NATO and the OSCE work hand-in-hand to deal with potential threats to peace. In Bosnia, the OSCE has played a critical role in helping to establish free elections and to improve respect for human rights. NATO has provided the military support needed to give such efforts a chance to succeed. OSCE monitors and mediators have played important roles in helping to resolve conflicts and to build democracy from Abkhazia and Tajikistan to South Ossetia and Ukraine.

In Kosovo too, in late 1998 and early 1999, NATO provided surveillance and other forms of support for the unarmed OSCE verifiers given the task of trying to ensure that agreements between the two sides in the conflict were respected. NATO and the OSCE have subsequently been fully engaged in international efforts to bring lasting peace and stability to Kosovo.

The relationship between NATO and the OSCE has become an important feature of the new security system which is being developed to meet the needs of the new century.


NATO's CONTRIBUTION TO PEACE IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

One of NATO’s biggest challenges of the last decade has been to help to restore peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, first by establishing and leading a multinational, military, Implementation Force (IFOR), of some 60,000 troops, from 1995 to 1996, and subsequently deploying a similar but smaller Stabilisation Force (SFOR) to the region. The mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina represented the Alliance’s first major involvement in operational peacekeeping.

The Stabilisation Force, initially consisting of some 32,000 troops drawn from 38 nations, supports the efforts of the international community and the United Nations aimed at implementing the peace agreement in Bosnia; preventing the conflict from spreading; ending the humanitarian crisis; and helping to create conditions for the country to rebuild itself after the devastation of years of conflict. SFOR has subsequently been reduced and, in mid-2000, consisted of a 20,000-strong peacekeeping mission comprising troops from 16 NATO member countries as well as from 13 Partner countries, including a 1,200-strong Russian contingent. Conflict in the Balkans has been the single most serious threat to stability in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Following the break-up of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991 and the escalating conflicts which ensued, NATO played a central role in efforts to bring peace to this troubled region.