German troops back to Bosnia
BERLIN - Germany has deployed troops with the European Union’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia for the first time in a decade as concerns mount instability from the Ukraine war could spread to the Western Balkans.
On Tuesday, the first German troops to return to the country were greeted in a ceremony at the Sarajevo headquarters of the EUFOR force that marked the start of their mission, a German military spokesman said. Germany will deploy some 30 troops in total to Bosnia by mid-September, returning to the force that it had left at the end of 2012.
Bosnia is hundreds of miles from the fighting in Ukraine but faces an increasingly assertive Bosnian Serb separatist movement that analysts say has at least tacit support from Moscow.
LONDON - The two candidates battling to be Britain’s next prime minister vied to present themselves as defenders of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, promising more scrutiny of Scotland’s government to undermine a new push for independence.
The Scottish National Party (SNP), which heads Scotland’s semi-autonomous government, wants to hold a second independence referendum next year, which could rip apart the world’s fifth-biggest economy.
The bonds holding together the four countries that make up the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — have been severely strained over the last six years by Brexit and the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Liz Truss, the foreign minister and frontrunner in the leadership race, and Rishi Sunak, a former finance minister, set out their policies for Scotland as they appeared at the only Conservative Party hustings in the country on Tuesday.
The two candidates competing to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson want more focus on the Scottish government’s record on health and education.