NATO Head Urges Passage of Reforms

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson warned Wednesday of a new Balkan war unless Macedonian lawmakers ratify a political agreement in exchange for ethnic Albanian rebels handing over some of their weapons to the alliance.

“This country has the chance to show that it is possible to deal with an internal conflict before the blood starts to pour down the streets,” Robertson said after meeting with Macedonian officials. “The alternative to what we are doing now will be horrifying, for all of those who live in this country, and indeed to those who live in the surrounding countries too.”

Under a peace deal, ethnic Albanian rebels are surrendering their weapons to NATO troops in exchange for amnesty, legislation boosting the legal status of the Albanian language and other rights.

But Macedonian officials have criticized NATO, saying the alliance is aiming to collect a mere fraction of the rebels’ weapons. NATO has said it expects to collect 3,300 weapons, while Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski insists that the true size of the arsenal is 60,000.

Parliament is expected to begin debating legislative reforms Friday. Votes on the reforms are to occur only when all the arms have been collected, and with the disagreement over numbers continuing, parliamentary hard-liners could stall the debate.

Amid the controversy, the NATO mission got a fresh infusion of manpower from Berlin on Wednesday as Germany’s lower house of Parliament approved the deployment of as many as 500 troops for the effort.

Unlike most NATO countries, Germany’s constitution requires parliamentary approval of any military activity abroad. Some of the soldiers were already geared up and assembled at airports, and they flew off for Macedonia as soon as the 497-130 vote was in.

Although Germany already has thousands of troops serving as peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the Macedonia mission proved highly controversial, as some politicians warned that the stated 30-day time limit for collecting rebel weapons was unrealistic.