Sarajevo centre offers global peacekeeper training

By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - "Welcome to Africa!"

This is how students are greeted as they embark on the final exercise in a unique course at a centre in Bosnia where officers are trained for peacekeeping duties all over the world.

A nation which first played uneasy host to thousands of peacekeeping troops during its own war in the 1990s is now at peace and can send officers to join multinational operations in more troubled lands.

As the training exercise plays out in the imaginary African country of Merango, peacekeepers get kidnapped. They face tough questions from authorities because soldiers killed wedding guests instead of terrorists, while others pollute a river by carelessly emptying oil from their military vehicles.

"This exercise is not run anywhere else in the world," said Duncan Spinner, director of Special Projects at the Peace Support Operations Training Centre.

Most students are from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has had peacekeepers on its soil both during and after the 1992-95 war. Some 2,500 peacekeepers are stationed there now, down from 60,000 at the end of the war.

Many trainees also come from ex-Yugoslav countries that fought each other in bitter wars through the 1990s, and the young officers are now learning how to cope with various problems as peacekeepers themselves.

"Finally we Bosnians are in a position to offer help, not only to receive it," said Captain Dejan Jandric.