Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Armed Forces (AF) have some 15 tons of munitions and mine-explosive devices (MiMES), of which the AF’s operative needs are some 7.5 tons, while 8.3 tons of MiMES are categorized as surplus and non-prospective, said the Strategic Committee for Munitions, Mines and Explosive Devices, during Monday session in Sarajevo.
The session was used for the presentation of Committee's results from 2017 and 2018, the challenges and their future activities concerning the armament and MiMES owned by Bosnia’s Ministry of Defence.
Bosnian Defence Minister’s assistant Boris Jerinic mentioned all the projects implemented by the Ministry with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the European Union Force Althea (EUFOR Althea) which is a military deployment in Bosnia to oversee the military implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.
Jerinic said the plan is to completely destroy the nonprospective MiMES in Bosnia by 2020 and that currently they have over 40,000 pieces of surplus armaments.
Head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia, Ambassador Bruce Berton expressed support to the efforts by the Defence Ministry and Bosnia’s AF in improving the infrastructure in locations where munitions are stored.
“The OSE Mission is working on improving the infrastructure and security conditions of armaments and MiMES storage which will result in greater security of the AF personnel and the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially those living near the munitions warehouses,” Berton said.
The OSCE Mission will host the next Strategic Committees session.
The session participants were the permanent Strategic Committee members: representatives of Bosnia’s Defence Ministry, AF Joint Staff, the EU, the OSCE, the UNDP, NATO HQ in Sarajevo, the EUFOR Command, representatives of the US, Swiss, German, British, Austrian and Swedish embassies and Bosnia’s Joint Commission on Defence and Security as observers.
