STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday June 7 6:51 AM ET NATO Tunes Up for Bush Visit As Macedonia Smolders By Douglas Hamilton BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO defense ministers met on Thursday to practice marching in step before President Bush makes his first visit to Europe next week. The 19-member alliance has been stung by media reports -- hotly denied then and since -- of a European policy rebuff for Secretary of State Colin Powell when foreign ministers met last week in Budapest. Accounts of transatlantic splits in NATO since Bush came to office with a new set of defense and strategic ideas were nonsense, Alliance General George Robertson told ministers at Thursday's opening session. ``I think that this meeting today will bear out the fact that last week's news stories of an alliance divided were in reality pure fiction,'' Robertson said. His complaint made clear, however, how sensitive NATO is to any whiff of disunity, and how much it wants to avoid any further appearance of discord before the Bush visit, be it over U.S. missile defense plans or Balkan peacekeeping. But the mounting crisis in Macedonia may spoil the choreography, yanking NATO's attention back to a threat far more imminent than that posed by the missile acquisition plans of ''rogue states'' or even genuine but civilized differences over future risks. MACEDONIA SMOULDERS Robertson condemned the ``cowardly and senseless'' killing of five Macedonian soldiers by ethnic Albanian guerrillas on Wednesday, urging the ``men of violence'' to lay down their guns and join the normal political process. Last month, Robertson denounced the guerrillas as ``murderous thugs'' who would never win a seat at the negotiating table at the point of their guns and should simply disappear. In contacts which have failed to remain secret, however, NATO and European Union powers are desperately trying to end the conflict by engineering blanket amnesty for the rebels. But hope of dialogue is literally going up in smoke. The central Macedonian city of Bitola, home to three of the latest victims, was still smoldering on Thursday after a night of rioting in which Albanian shops and homes were burned. The widening gulf between Slavs and minority Albanians could lead Macedonia closer to a civil war on the doorstep of Kosovo, scene of NATO's biggest military undertaking in its 52-year history, where 36,000 peacekeepers are on duty. Robertson said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had given the allies a briefing on a far-reaching U.S. defense review taking in missile defense and nuclear posture. ``It marks an important opportunity to consult about the direction of U.S. thinking before any decisions are made, and we welcome this commitment to consultation in NATO,'' he said. While America's allies accept that the proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction is giving rise to new threats which will need new responses, they are concerned about consigning classic Cold War arms control to the garbage bin. Rumsfeld told reporters on Wednesday that planned testing of missile defenses technologies could soon collide with the provisions of the U.S-Soviet anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, which some see as the ``cornerstone'' on arms control. Rumsfeld told NATO defense ministers, however, that nothing stays the same and while the United States did not possess a crystal ball to clearly discern future threats, it would be a failure of duty not to try to address them. He outlined the architecture of a ``layered'' missile defense that might provide protective shields are different altitudes, but there was no precise detail in the presentation and, as one senior diplomat put it, ``no attempt to close the sale.'' __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
