Page 70 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

710 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

the UN which would then submit a formal protest to the relevant Serbian, Bosnian or
Croatian authorities.
In September 1992, the STANAVFORMED force was relieved by NATO’s Standing
Naval Force Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT) for three weeks and since Danish corvette
Niels Juel was part of this force at the time , it naturally became part of the MARITIME
MONITOR operation.

Map of Operation MARITIME MON-
ITOR / SHARP GUARD, summer
1993. The coastline to be monitored
covered the area from the Albanian
port of Vlore in the south to Du-
brovnik in the north and was divided
into a number of patrol areas.

On 16 November 1992, the UN
Security Council adopted a new reso-
lution on the civil war in Yugoslavia.
This Resolution - No. 787 - remedied
some of the problems with the inabil-
ity of the deployed forces to enforce
the previous resolution and the Mari-
time Monitor units now had authori-
zation to stop and inspect any vessel
they thought might be in the process
of violating Resolution No. 713 or
No. 757. Consequently, MARITIME
MONITOR became a genuine embar-
go operation and on the 22 November,
the name was changed to MARITIME
GUARD. The WEU mission was
also renamed and became SHARP
FENCE.

On 12 April 1993, the NATO mission was extended when the organization was tasked
to enforce the UN’s new no-fly zone over the former Yugoslavia. The NATO operation
was named DENY FLIGHT and aircrafts from alliance immediately began patrolling
the airspace over Yugoslavia. DENY FLIGHT did not directly impact the daily enforce-
ment of the embargo in the Adriatic Sea, but the task of keeping an eye on the area was
lessened when the SHARP GUARD units were given access to the air situation above
the Adriatic Sea produced by NATO AWACS planes.
DENY FLIGHT came to demonstrate NATO’s readiness to use force when six Ser-
bian aircraft violated the no-flight ban on 28 February 1994. NATO - engaging in their
first combat mission in history - shot down four of the six Serbian aircraft. The Serbian