Cheney: Bush would consider reducing overseas troops

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Dick Cheney said Thursday that if he and George W. Bush are elected they will look at scaling back U.S. troops in the Balkans and letting European allies take on more responsibility for peacekeeping.

''I haven't seen yet any proposal from the administration to get out of Kosovo or Bosnia,'' Cheney said at a school in south Florida where he was campaigning for the Republican ticket.

''One approach would be to have our European friends and allies pick up a bigger share of the burden there,'' Cheney said. He commented a day after he delivered a stinging assessment of a Clinton-era military he said was stretched too thin by overseas peacekeeping missions.

Cheney has accused President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore of running down the military, but he said Thursday he's not ready to say where he would recommend increases until a new Bush administration does a complete military review.

The Balkans mission, however, is the first place that he'd recommend reductions.

''We need to make those kind of choices given that the size of our forces has been pretty dramatically reduced,'' Cheney said.

Clinton has been scaling back troops in the Balkans from the nearly 20,000 sent to the region in 1995.

There are now 4,600 U.S. troops in Bosnia, out of a total of 22,000 peacekeepers. There are 6,200 U.S. troops in Kosovo, out of a total force of 44,000. Clinton administration officials have expressed hopes of drawing down the U.S. presence further, but there currently are no deadlines.

Cheney, who as defense secretary in the Bush administration helped craft U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf War, said there are times when it's appropriate for the United States to send troops on peacekeeping missions, either in a coalition through the United Nation Security Counsel or unilaterally when circumstances require the nation to ''act aggressively and independently.''

Asked which Clinton-era deployments he thought should not have been made, Cheney said he would not have sent soldiers to Haiti.