Ambassadors Vote Today on Deploying Full Force
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 22, 2001; Page A12
PARIS, Aug. 21 -- NATO's supreme commander, Gen. Joseph Ralston, gave the
go-ahead for deploying troops to Macedonia today, setting the stage for another
NATO commitment in the volatile Balkans region. At a closed-door meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Ralston briefed
ambassadors from the alliance's 19 countries on the results of his fact-finding
trip this week to Macedonia to determine if conditions were ripe for the NATO
intervention. Diplomats said Ralston and NATO Secretary General George Robertson
endorsed the British-led mission, called Operation Essential Harvest, and pushed
for it to begin quickly, warning that a delay might allow the fragile cease-fire
to unravel. After consulting overnight with their governments, the NATO ambassadors were
expected to give formal approval Wednesday. An advance NATO force, mainly from Britain's 16th Air Assault Brigade, but
also including French and Czech troops, has been in Macedonia since the weekend.
If the North Atlantic Council -- the alliance's decision-making body -- proceeds
as expected, the full force of 3,500 troops could begin deploying within the
week. The NATO force will include a small U.S. component, limited to logistics and
intelligence and likely consisting mainly of troops already in Macedonia
providing support to NATO's peacekeeping force in the neighboring Serbian
province of Kosovo. Unlike the open-ended peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, the NATO force in
Macedonia will have a carefully circumscribed assignment. The troops have been
ordered only to gather weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels who have risen up
against the Slavic-dominated government in Skopje. The rebels agreed to disarm
as part of a cease-fire signed Aug. 12 by leading Macedonian and ethnic Albanian
political parties. Ralston concluded during his visit that the cease-fire was solid enough to
make the NATO mission possible. But if NATO diplomats needed any reminder of the fragility of the truce --
and the potential danger NATO troops face in this latest Balkan venture -- it
came during the early morning hours when an explosion damaged a church inside a
13th century Serbian Orthodox monastery in Lesok, just outside the volatile city
of Tetovo. The Macedonian government immediately blamed ethnic Albanian rebels,
who officials said were trying to scuttle the cease-fire and enrage the Slavic
Macedonian majority in advance of the NATO deployment. The Macedonian majority is already wary of the NATO involvement, believing
that the U.S.- and European-brokered peace agreement to end the six-month-old
conflict gives away too much to the ethnic Albanians and rewards an armed
insurgency. Some also blame NATO for allowing the rebels to infiltrate into
Macedonia from neighboring Kosovo, where NATO has about 40,000 troops. Anti-NATO
protesters this week blocked roads and held a banner calling NATO the "New
Albanian Terrorist Organization." An ethnic Albanian commander from the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA)
was quoted by the Reuters news service as denying his group was involved in the
church blast, which destroyed the altar and reduced the nave to a pile of
debris. "I can completely and categorically say that this was not the NLA," the
commander, named Leka, was quoted saying. He said a "special team of
Macedonians" was likely behind the attack, in an effort to blame ethnic
Albanians and arouse the population. Diplomats said the bombing, against one of Macedonia's most revered Christian
shrines, was precisely the kind of incident that could undermine the truce. They
said it underscored the need for NATO to move into Macedonia quickly and begin
implementing the peace accord's key component: taking weapons from the ethnic
Albanian guerrillas. NATO officials have stressed that the mission is technically not meant to
disarm the insurgents, because they have already agreed to voluntarily hand in
their weapons. Rather, they said, the NATO troops will simply gather the weapons
as they are delivered to designated collection points and then dispose of them
outside the country. The job will be tricky, since there will be no independent means of verifying
that the weapons being turned in amount to the rebel group's full arsenal. Also,
many rebels do not want to be identified or photographed for fear of reprisals,
so the collection points will have to be relatively secluded. The entire operation is supposed to be limited to 30 days, a condition set
down by NATO military commanders and diplomats who fear becoming overextended in
yet another open-ended Balkan mission. In addition to the Kosovo contingent,
there are 20,000 NATO troops in Bosnia. Some outside analysts have said, however, the 30-day timetable may prove
unrealistic, especially if the foreign forces are called to act as a buffer
between the two communities.
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