Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- Their marching song is that of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, in Albanian, learned from Hollywood war movies. [....] "We will not truly believe peace is at hand until the NATO troops arrive," said Luli, an NLA military police officer as he watched the lustily singing recruits. Commander Ilir chimed in: "We just hope to be able to take home our uniforms as souvenirs if NATO allows us." Friday August 17 4:49 AM ET Rebels Still Train for War but Eye Macedonia Peace By Mark Heinrich BRODEC, Macedonia (Reuters) - In a Macedonian mountain meadow under an Albanian flag, guerrillas are training another crop of volunteers despite a landmark peace pact. Their marching song is that of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, in Albanian, learned from Hollywood war movies. ``We do not trust the Macedonian promises to make us equal citizens and until they do we must be ready to fight,'' said Nexhbedin Mehmeti, 38, coated in dust after crawling, climbing and leaping his way through an obstacle course. But just down the road, past a sandbagged machinegun nest staring across a canyon at government territory, the guerrillas' political director signed a disarmament agreement on Tuesday. It commits the so-called National Liberation Army to discard arms and ammunition at NATO collection points and disband over a 30-day period. Legislation improving the rights of Macedonia's Albanian minority is to be simultaneously enacted by parliament. The 30-day countdown is expected to start within the next two weeks if a NATO advance team due to arrive this weekend decides an oft-broken cease-fire is steady enough to send in the 3,500-strong disarmament contingent. As the new NLA recruits went through their paces, the truce was tottering again in the valley below. A Macedonian policeman was shot dead and an Albanian civilian shot and wounded at two separate checkpoints in the front-line city of Tetovo. ``We will not truly believe peace is at hand until the NATO troops arrive,'' said Luli, an NLA military police officer as he watched the lustily singing recruits. GUERRILLAS WANTED TOUGHER NATO PRESENCE ``And even then, a lot of us would prefer NATO to stay on a long time as a kind of protection force because we have our doubts whether the Macedonians really want democracy, not just a Slav tyranny in democratic clothing.'' NATO negotiators, under orders not to be drawn into a third indefinite Balkans peacekeeping mission after Bosnia and Kosovo, refused NLA political director Ali Ahmeti's request for a longer, more robust security mandate. Although always professing to be seeking only equal rights for their people in Macedonia, the NLA and ethnic Albanian political party leaders originally demanded an international security force and an international peace conference. The Macedonian government rejected both, wary of ''internationalizing'' the conflict with a separatist Albanian entity evolving behind NATO-guarded cease-fire lines. Macedonia already seems to have vanished from the northern rebel highlands, aside from the state mobile phone signal used by many guerrillas. The red-and-black Albanian flag waves. Cars sport identical red license plates emblazoned only with ``UCK'' in big black letters, the NLA's Albanian acronym. But rebels now speak gamely of being ``integrated as equal citizens'' in Macedonian society, citing government approval of an amnesty and jobs for Albanians in the civil service and police reflecting their numbers -- one-third of the population. For that reason, they dismiss Macedonian suspicions that they will hide weapons from NATO collectors, as their guerrilla brethren did in Kosovo under a post-war U.N. administration plagued ever since by armed violence against non-Albanians. ``We can be integrated in this country, so to bury weapons would be a (credibility) problem for us,'' said Commander Ilir, a 28-year-old member of the NLA general staff based in Sipkovica who, like all guerrilla officers, divulges only his code name. GUERRILLAS COUNT ON INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY ``After NATO goes, there will be international monitors as insurance for our communities and we will have enough people in the police force to have no need to hide guns.'' NATO has estimated the number of NLA weapons -- including mortars and shoulder-launched grenades that have wreaked havoc on the lumbering Macedonian army -- at about 3,000. With rampant smuggling from neighboring Kosovo, no one knows for sure. Macedonian authorities contend that the guerrilla uprising was exported by radicals from the old Kosovo Liberation Army -- whose Albanian acronym is the same as the NLA -- bent on carving out a ``Greater Albania.'' But NLA commanders say 90 percent of their 2,300-odd men are Macedonian citizens. Although some fought in Kosovo, the NLA resists comparisons with the KLA which fought for independence from a Serbia much more repressive than Macedonia. ``We consider the Macedonia situation quite different. Kosovo had war for two years, there was major destruction and frequent massacres,'' said Commander Qela, another general staff member. ``In Macedonia we have had more periods of calm than war and we've had just six months of conflict and NATO is already coming. And we have actually had ethnically mixed governments for years, unlike Kosovo, although not equality,'' he said. ``So despite our doubts, and we must be on our guard, we think there is a chance for common life, unlike Kosovo.'' Commander Ilir chimed in: ``We just hope to be able to take home our uniforms as souvenirs, if NATO allows us.'' . __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! 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