Rules on opening fire 'put troops at risk'

A cross-party committee of MPs last night warned that secret rules of engagement should allow British troops to defend themselves in Bosnia.

Members of the Commons Select Committee on Defence feared the French were able to fire more readily than British forces, putting British troops more at risk. They said in a report that troops should not be "unduly circumscribed" by United Nations constraints.

The Ministry of Defence told the committee in private that the rules of engagement, which are classified, had been changed three times in the past year to meet the changing threat to troops in Bosnia. The troops are not allowed to fire first, but the arrival of the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) will allow British troops to counter more effectively the threat of hostage- taking by Bosnian Serbs.

The committee said the British taxpayer may have to foot the bill for more than half the additional cost - about pounds 245m - of sending the RRF 24 Airmobile Brigade to Bosnia.

The committee warned Michael Portillo, the new Secretary of State for Defence, who is regarded as Thatcherite on spending, that it would be a "grave mistake" to surrender further cuts to the Treasury in the current annual review of public expenditure.

The wide-ranging report said it would be "folly" to lower the guard against terrorism in Northern Ireland, until arms are decommissioned on a serious scale. While it did not oppose withdrawing more troops, it was important that the infrastructure of the British armed presence in Ulster should be maintained and the watchtowers should be kept, in spite of calls from nationalists for them to be removed.

The committee warned that lasting peace should not be used as a pretext for cuts in defence spending. The total defence budget of pounds 22.3bn for 1997-98 represented a further small fall of about 0.4 per cent in defence spending from 1996-97 levels, to about 2.8 per cent of gross domestic product.

Any growth in GDP as a result of an upturn in the economy should be used to make good deficiencies in the defence forces, the committee said. It would take two years for Britain's armed services to settle down to the cuts in spending, which had led to 24,000 redundancies, with 11,500 more to follow in 1995-6 and 1996-7.

The committee was alarmed that there was no agreed solution within Nato for an air-identification friend-or-foe system to stop killings through "friendly fire", such as the British victims of an attack by American "tank busters" in the Gulf war.

It reinforced complaints about "overstretch", protesting that more than half of the infantry battalions, including those in Bosnia, were given breaks of less than 24 months between tours of duty.

8 Defence Committee Ninth Report; HoC paper 572 HMSO ; pounds 21.30.

Nato threat, page 7