First GIs Land in Macedonia to Help Curb Balkans War : Military: Soldiers are part of first ground unit sent by Clinton to region. It will number about 300.

The first American GIs sent to keep peace in the former Yugoslav federation arrived Monday with orders to keep Bosnia’s war from spreading into a land that has often been a flash point for Balkan bloodletting.

Two C-141s landed in Macedonia’s capital with 20 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s Berlin Brigade, wearing the powder-blue berets of the United Nations. The planes also carried vehicles and supplies.

Another 20 members of the advance team are to arrive today, followed by the main body of about 260 soldiers, possibly by the end of the week.

The soldiers constitute the first U.S. ground unit deployed to a former Yugoslav republic by President Clinton, although individual Americans are working in various U.N. capacities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The American troops will join a force of 700 mostly Scandinavian soldiers. The peacekeepers are deployed along Macedonia’s 260-mile border with Serbia to the north and Albania to the west.

Macedonia, with a population of about 2 million, is the only republic to have seceded from the Yugoslav federation without violence. There is no immediate threat to its borders, but there are fears that ethnic fighting in former federation partners could spill into Macedonia and draw in other Balkan nations.

As an impoverished, landlocked region with much larger neighbors--Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia--Macedonia was a crucible for the 1912-13 Balkan Wars as well as a focal point of the struggle for control of southeastern Europe in World Wars I and II.

More than 60,000 of the Yugoslav army’s soldiers and hundreds of tanks withdrew last year but remain within easy striking distance. Macedonia’s army of 14,000 is equipped with only light infantry weapons.

“Danger is again arising on our northern border,” Defense Minister Vlado Popovski said Monday, referring to the tense Serbian province of Kosovo. “If fighting erupts between the Serbian army and the Albanian people in Kosovo province, that border would be seriously threatened.”

About 90% of Kosovo’s estimated 2 million residents are Albanians. Tensions have been rising since 1990, when Serbia’s nationalist leader, Slobodan Milosevic, revoked Kosovo’s autonomy.

Popovski said in an interview that the arrival “of even a token American contingent” improves the chances for keeping war out of Macedonia. Because of that, the American peacekeepers should be deployed along the “most critical and volatile” border with Kosovo, he said.