World

No NATO Troops For Macedonia

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 8, 2001 / 12:32 PM EDT / CBS

Western military intervention in Macedonia remains off the agenda despite a request from President Boris Trajkovski for help to disarm ethnic Albanian guerrillas, NATO chief George Robertson said Thursday.

However, he said the alliance expressed support for the internationally backed peace plan unveiled by Trajkovski last week, which covers incentives for the rebels to give up their four-month insurgency and contains proposals for disarmament.

"The key thing now is to translate a plan on paper into peace in place," Robertson said after arriving in Skopje following a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

Robertson said there are no plans for NATO-led Kosovo peacekeepers to be deployed in Macedonia.

"We haven't started thinking about alterations to mandates," he said.

Meanwhile, Britain, already a major contributor to peacekeeping in the Balkans, said on Thursday it had offered to send training teams to help the Macedonian army, which is facing an insurgency by ethnic Albanian rebels.

The Ministry of Defense said the offer of assistance had been open for some time but that the Macedonians had yet to make a direct request for help.

"We have offered the Macedonian government training teams to help out their army," a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

"We are talking about what may be required in the future. The secretary general (of NATO) is over there at the moment, and he will decide what, if anything, needs to be done."

"What we are here to do is to encourage this process, the process of dialogue (and) reforms," said Robertson, who was accompanied by European Union security chief Javier Solana.

Trajkovski's spokeswoman Dimka Ilkova-Boskovic said that during talks Thursday, Solana said the European Union was ready to provide forces to help implement the disarming of rebels under any peace deal.

The United States and the European Union Thursday, however, stressed the need for political, not military, solutions for Macedonia.

A joint statement to be issued by President Bush and EU leaders said: "Together, we are endeavoring to prevent extremism from undermining the democratic process and stress the need for political, not military, solutions."

NATO, though, played down speculation Wednesday that it was considering military intervention, but diplomats say it could play a role in the disarmament process, as it has in neighboring Kosovo.

"President Trajkovski has asked us officially if we will help with that process," Robertson told a news conference after talks with Macedonian political leaders. "I will be taking that request back to NATO headquarters to see what we can do."

Violence erupted in Macedonia in February when ethnic Albanian militants took up arms in a fight they say is for broader rights. Macedonian authorities have led several offensives to dislodge the rebels from their strongholds, contending they are separatists bent on carving up the country.

While refusing to negotiate with the rebels, Trakovski and other top officials representing the majority Slavic population are trying to reach an agreement with political leaders of the restive ethnic Albanian community, which accounts for nearly one-third of Macedonia's 2 million people.

The rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army, issued a statement Thursday demanding that their representatives be included in the peace negotiations and that NATO be a guarantor of a cease-fire and an eventual political agreement.

They said a general cease-fire should be proclaimed and NLA members should later be integrated into the army and police, according to the ethnic composition of the country. They also demanded general amnesty and the release of ethnic Albanian political prisoners.

A government spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, rejected the rebel demands, especially their direct inclusion in the talks and integration into the army and police.