Operation Joint Endeavor

September 20, 1996

Background

Signing
[Image: CNN]
The Balkan leaders signed
as NATO leaders watched

As prospects for peace in Bosnia improved in autumn 1995, following Operation Deliberate Force, the Alliance reaffirmed its readiness to help implement a peace plan and stepped up its contingency planning to do so. In the light of the peace agreement initialed in Dayton (Ohio, USA) on 21 November 1995, and following the signing of the Bosnian Peace Agreement in Paris on December 14, 1995, and on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 1031, the North Atlantic Council authorized on December 1, 1995 the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) to deploy enabling forces into Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This decision demonstrated NATO's preparedness to implement the military aspects of the peace agreement once it is signed and to help create the conditions for a lasting peace in former Yugoslavia. The North Atlantic Council gave also provisional approval to the overall military plan.

Operation Joint Endeavour

On 5 December 1995, the NATO Council, meeting at the level of Foreign Defense Ministers, endorsed the military planning for the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), stating that Operation Joint Endeavour will attest to NATO's capacity to fulfill its new mission of crisis management and peacekeeping, in addition to its core functions as defensive alliance. The Acting Secretary General announced that fourteen non-NATO countries — which had expressed interest in participation — would be invited to contribute to the Implementation Force: Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and Ukraine.