NATO OKs Macedonia Deployment

NATO undertook its third Balkan mission in less than a decade Wednesday after ambassadors from its 19 member states gave formal approval to a plan that calls on alliance soldiers to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia.

Political and military officials at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization laid out details of “Operation Essential Harvest” shortly before more than 100 soldiers from the French Foreign Legion--the first troops of the full deployment--arrived here in the Macedonian capital Wednesday afternoon.

Weapons collection could begin as early as Monday, at which point the clock on the operation will begin ticking, said Maj. Gen. Gunnar Lange, a Dane in charge of the alliance task force carrying out the operation. NATO has pledged to gather the arms in just 30 days, with the entire mission--from deployment to departure--scheduled to last two months.

The alliance agreed to the mission as part of a peace accord negotiated by Macedonian political leaders to end a 6-month-old rebellion by ethnic Albanian guerrillas. NATO sent 400 soldiers to this Balkan nation last weekend as an advance party but held back approval of the full operation until Wednesday.

NATO liaison teams are already working closely with guerrilla commanders to determine how and where weapons will be turned in. There will be five collection areas, primarily in rugged mountain regions, with a number of collection sites within each area, according to officials.

After the weapons are collected, they will be taken to a third country, probably Greece, and destroyed.

Roughly 3,500 alliance soldiers will be deployed in a multinational force led by Britain, which will provide nearly a third of the troops. A dozen other NATO countries, including the United States, also will provide military personnel.

The United States will play a relatively minor role, relying on soldiers who are already stationed either in Macedonia or in neighboring Kosovo, a U.N.-administered province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. The U.S. personnel will mostly assist with logistics and planning.

Major questions, however, remain about key elements of the mission, including how many weapons NATO will collect and how it will hold to its tight schedule.

NATO officials acknowledged that the operation could be problematic but said the only alternative was to allow civil war.

“The risks of not sending the troops are far greater,” NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said at a news conference at alliance headquarters in Brussels.

Europeans fear that if the conflict in Macedonia goes unchecked, it will destabilize the Balkans and surrounding nations.

NATO already has troops deployed on Balkan peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Macedonian conflict began in February when ethnic Albanian rebels, calling themselves the National Liberation Army, took up arms. The rebels say they are fighting to protect the rights of the nation’s ethnic Albanians, who make up at least 25% of Macedonia’s 2 million people. The government fears that the guerrillas are seeking independence.

While the alliance is disarming the rebels, Macedonia’s parliament is expected to change the constitution and laws to implement the Western-brokered peace deal between ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders. The changes would elevate the legal status of the Albanian language, dramatically increase the number of ethnic Albanians in the country’s police force and ensure that some of them would serve in majority Albanian communities.

The difficulties NATO faces were evident Wednesday even as officials were announcing the full deployment. A fight was brewing between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians over how many weapons the rebels should have to hand over.

The rebels have said they will turn in about 2,000 weapons; the government has estimated that the guerrillas have about 8,500.

On Wednesday, however, the Interior Ministry said previous estimates were far too low and argued that the guerrillas “have at their disposal more than 85,000 weapons mostly made in China and Yugoslavia.”

NATO has sought to discount higher weapons estimates. On Wednesday, officials refused to say how many weapons they will seek to collect and suggested that the will to disarm is more important than the numbers.

“It’s premature to speculate on the number of weapons,” said Daniel Speckhard, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary-general for political affairs. “We have a firm commitment from the [rebel] leadership that they intend to disarm and turn over their weapons . . . and see this as their best opportunity for peace.”

Other officials noted that unless the guerrillas give up their fight, the disarmament exercise will be for naught, since they could quickly obtain new arms.

“Of course, numbers and figures are very important, but we know we are in a region where they can rearm,” said Maj. Gen. Lange. “They can buy new weapons, so it’s a lot more important that the trust and confidence and the political agreement give them no wish to rearm and start fighting again.”

Similarly dicey is the NATO timetable for collection. It hangs on the hope that parliament moves quickly to enact the peace deal and that a shaky ongoing cease-fire holds up.

Stojan Andov, speaker of parliament, has indicated that lawmakers will not begin consideration of the peace deal until at least one-third of the rebels’ weapons have been handed in.

Clashes between rebels and government forces could force NATO troops to withdraw, at least temporarily, from the area around the conflict. The rules of engagement under which the alliance forces are operating allow NATO troops to fire only if they are fired upon.

Robertson brushed away suggestions that 30 days would not be enough to collect the arms and ensure the success of the tenuous peace deal.