[ALBSA-Info] Bush to rally U.S. troops in Kosovo, cite exit goal

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Bush to rally U.S. troops in Kosovo, cite exit goal

By Randall Mikkelsen
  
ROME, July 24 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush travels to Kosovo on 
Tuesday to give a pep talk to U.S. peacekeeping troops and urge NATO partners 
to help ensure conditions for a timely exit for all peacekeepers. 

"The president wants to thank our troops for their service there," U.S. 
national security adviser spokeswoman Condoleezza Rice told reporters on 
Monday. 

Bush, at a news conference on Monday, reiterated his vow not to pull U.S. 
forces out of the Balkans unilaterally, a vow which has reassured European 
leaders concerned about campaign statements questioning U.S. peacekeeping 
involvement. 

"Americans came into the Balkans with our friends and we will leave with our 
friends," he said. 

But a senior U.S. official later said that Bush would also deliver a reminder 
of the eventual goal of withdrawing the forces when the Balkans are stable. 

"We will go out together, but the other part of that point, which sometimes 
gets forgotten here in Europe, is that we want to hasten the day when we'll 
go out together by building democratic institutions by deploying civil police 
and so forth," the aide said. 

Bush is to visit Camp Bondsteel, headquarters of U.S. peacekeeping operations 
in the southern Serbian province. American soldiers make up about 6,000 of 
the 42,000 troops from 30 countries serving in the NATO-led Kosovo 
peacekeeping operations. 

Another 20,000 peacekeepers were serving in the NATO-led SFOR peacekeeping 
mission in Bosnia at the beginning of 2001, of which 4,300 were American. The 
number of U.S. troops has since been cut to 3,350. 

Kosovo has been under United Nations administration since the 1999 bombing 
campaign against Yugoslavia to halt oppression of ethnic Albanians by Serb 
forces. 

Former President Bill Clinton made a similar visit to the troops in November 
1999, when he also spoke to Kosovo residents in the town of Urosevac. 

Bush is to meet U.N. special representative Hans Haekkerup -- a former Danish 
defence minister -- and the commander of the Kosovo peacekeeping forces, 
Lieutenant-General Thorstein Skiaker, of Norway. The two will brief Bush on 
efforts by the peacekeepers to counter prevent insurgent violence in 
neighboring Macedonia. 

Bush will also meet Brigadier Gen. Bill David, commander of the U.S. Task 
Force Falcon based at Camp Bondsteel. 

He will eat lunch with enlisted soldiers. "General David will also report 
that morale is very high amidst the young soldiers there," the U.S. official 
said. 

Bush is to return to Rome from Kosovo then fly home to Washington aboard Air 
Force One, after a seven-day trip to Europe. Bush visited Britain, 
participated in the annual summit of the Group of Eight major nations in 
Genoa, and met Pope John Paul II and Italian Prime Minister Silvio 
Berlusconi.