NATO opened the way on Thursday for the EU to replace its peacekeeping operation in Bosnia within 12-18 months, but Washington sounded unenthusiastic about the bloc's ambition.
Secretary-General George Robertson said defense ministers of the 19-nation alliance, meeting for a second day in Colorado Springs, were looking at how the 12,000-strong Stabilization Force, known as SFOR, could hand over its tasks.
"We did talk this morning about the possibility of a handover at some stage, within the next 12-18 months, to another force ... run by the European Union," he said.
EU defense ministers agreed last weekend to aim for a takeover in mid-2004, and Britain offered to take command of a new force of some 6,000 personnel which would probably combine military and policing tasks.
Diplomats said the EU had calculated that the US -- with its heavy military commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere -- would now be ready to accept a handover timeframe it had previously dismissed as too hasty.
But US ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns sought to douse expectations that a deal was on its way, saying it was "too early to talk specifically about a transition."
He told news agencies there had been "very little discussion" about what would follow SFOR because talks were needed between the EU and NATO, and with the Bosnian government.
Washington was angered last year when, with no warning, the EU offered to take control of the SFOR operation.
The EU's fledgling reaction force made its debut in peacekeeping operations in April, sending a tiny force to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, and followed that up with a mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Macedonia mission was seen as a model for burden-sharing with Washington under which the EU takes more responsibility for stabilizing and rebuilding the Balkans after a decade of ethnic wars.
But Washington sought in June to cool EU ambitions to take over the much larger peacekeeping operation in Bosnia by mid-2004, arguing it was too early even to start discussions.
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