European Union defence ministers backed Wednesday a plan to phase out the EU's peacekeeping operation in Bosnia but set no date for doing so, French Defence Minister Herve Morin said.
  
The ministers, at informal talks in Deauville, northern France, opted by a strong majority to end the mission and replace it with a rapid reaction force -- either civilian police or military -- based outside of Bosnia.
  
"Of the four options studied, we preferred to end the military mission in its current form," said Morin, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.
  
He said that the withdrawal would happen "progressively", especially as "one or two countries" that he did not name wanted to keep the force as it was.
  
An official decision on the withdrawal is expected to be taken at the next formal meeting of EU defence ministers in Brussels on November 10, but Morin insisted that the bloc would not be running out on Bosnia.
  
"There is no question of Europe leaving immediately, which would be a bad sign," he said.
  
However he added: "We can't say to our people that we have to have these missions but that we don't know how to finish them."
  
Althea, launched in 2004, numbers around 2,200 troops and is charged with military tasks under a peace deal that ended the 1992-1995 war, and officers insist it has essentially finished its job.
  
It conducts training, de-mining and air traffic control activities, as well as monitoring military movements, particularly around weapons arsenals.
  
But security has improved markedly in recent years, and the capture of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is on trial for genocide, has further helped foster stability.
  
British General John McColl, who commands EU and NATO forces in Bosnia, has been "mandated" by the 27 European nations to "present more precise options" by November, a French diplomat said.
  
A French official said that Althea had essentially finished its tasks and that that the rapid reaction team "could deploy at any time should things deteriorate."
  
Indeed the diplomat confirmed that the ministers had rejected a withdrawal of the peacekeepers without any transitional measures, or to continue the mission as it stands.
  
On the eve of the talks, the defence ministry in Spain, which has some 260 troops in Althea, said in a statement that the Bosnia mission should be transformed into a civilian operation.
  
"After 15 years of Spain's uninterrupted presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the transfer of responsibilities from the EUFOR operation to the armed forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina is practically completed," it said.
  
The statement said Defence Minister Carme Chacon would ask her peers to transform "EUFOR Althea into an essentially civilian operation, as long as the situation on the ground allows it."