GERMANY
is assembling a Nato force of 10,000 troops, including British
units, to prevent the Macedonian conflict erupting into another
full-blown Balkan war.
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Close
proximity: Albanian rebels cross the road just 500 metres from
a Macedonian army
checkpoint |
SAS troops
are in southern Kosovo preparing the ground by cutting off supply
lines and reinforcements to the Albanian separatist National
Liberation Army, defence sources said yesterday. The Ministry of
Defence said it had no knowledge of any Nato force being readied for
Macedonia but The Telegraph understands that British troops have
already been committed.
Representatives of the so-called Quint, the top five military
countries in Nato - America, Britain, France, Germany and Italy -
met in Brussels to discuss plans to put troops into Macedonia.
The big question mark remained over what contribution if any, the
Americans would make. President Bush apparently ruled out military
intervention on Wednesday at the Nato summit. But yesterday he was
more vague.
He said: "Our government is committed to working with Nato and
the EU to bring peace and democracy and stability to that part of
the world." Lord Robertson, Nato Secretary-General, said yesterday
that Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski had made an official
request for Nato help in disarming the ethnic Albanian rebels.
Lord Robertson said in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, whose
eastern suburbs are now front-line territory, that he would be
taking the request back to Nato "to see what we can do". But with
the NLA making Nato involvement a pre-requisite for their agreement
to disarm, there seemed little doubt the force would go in.
Mr Trajkovski's blueprint for a solution to the conflict calls
for an immediate ceasefire, a partial amnesty for the guerrillas and
the inclusion of more Albanians in state institutions.
It also envisages the deployment of Nato soldiers in ethnic
Albanian areas to oversee the demilitarisation of the NLA. Western
diplomats say such an operation may be an acceptable compromise
between full-scale Nato intervention and the policy of
watch-and-wait adopted so far.
Nato troops would enter the country from Kosovo, fan out across
northern Macedonia to set up arms collection points, perhaps without
seeking a new mandate. Around 3,000 of the Kfor troops already in
Macedonia are based at Skopje airport, which is now thought to be
within range of guerrilla mortars.
Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting, which first broke out in
February, have been given added impetus in recent weeks as the
conflict has worsened. Albanian guerrillas have seized ever more
territory and, as a reaction, there has been a rash of anti-Albanian
riots in large cities in the south of the country.
Western officials are anxious not to repeat the mistakes made in
Bosnia and Kosovo when lengthy procrastination and a series of
half-measures allowed early clashes to spiral out of control. The
Ministry of Defence yesterday reiterated
an offer to the Macedonian government to train a small, elite
unit that could be used in combat against the
guerrillas.
A spokesman said the operation could be modelled on Britain's
involvement in Sierra Leone where it is training a new government
army.
Javier Solana, the EU security chief who accompanied Lord
Robertson to Skopje yesterday, was reported to have told Macedonian
officials that the EU may step in if Nato balks at providing
peacekeepers to support the Trajkovski plan.
Following the meetings in Skopje, leading Macedonian and Albanian
parties were set to begin a two-day summit near Lake Ohrid in the
south of the country to hammer out the details of the Trajkovski
plan. The NLA, which has not been invited to the talks, responded by
releasing its own plan for peace.
On the ground, a shaky ceasefire entered its third day yesterday.
Analysts say the Macedonian army has all but given up on attempts to
shell the NLA into submission. The guerrillas for their part appear
content to consolidate their grip over newly-conquered
territories.
