Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [Please note UN - and not NATO - forces to restore order; and a UN mission to patrol the borders, not to maintain the status quo after foreign-based terrorists have seized as much territory as they could. Exactly as with Kosovo three years ago, the only role for any outside force should be to protect a sovereign nation and its people from terrorist assaults emanating from abroad; assaults that could never have occurred without Western connivance and assistance. The rest of the report that follows is the standard NATOise pabulum about evil nationalist "Slavs" and so forth. Though the final paragraph is significant in that it quotes verbaim, without commentary or disclaimer, the non-negotiable demands placed by the CIA-trained NLA/KLA, which is not a party to the so-called peace accords, on the multi-ethnic parliament of Macedonia as though such a threat was perfectly normal and worthy of being honored.] Macedonia demands U.N. peacekeepers Copyright 2001 by United Press International.September 01, 2001 SKOPJE, Macedonia, Aug 31, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- President Boris Trajkovski called on the international community Friday to guarantee peace in Macedonia after ratification of a political accord and rebel disarmament are completed. "We expect the international community to help us keep and enforce the peace," he said in an address to parliament. "I am asking today for a reintroduction of the United Nations Preventative Deployment force --UNPREDEP," that operated in Macedonia from 1992 until March 1999. "UNPREDEP was a successful mission and it kept the peace by patrolling the borders," Trajkovski said. U.S. soldiers led the former U.N. peacekeeping operation in Macedonia, which consisted of about 1,000 soldiers deployed along the country's borders with Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. The mission was scrapped after China vetoed an extension of its mandate in the U.N. Security Council on the eve of the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia. NATO has said that its current force of about 5,000 troops in Macedonia will leave at the end of its mandate to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels. Western diplomats have been discussing in recent days what, if any, international presence could be sent to Macedonia to keep the lid on ethnic tensions after the guerrilla force known as the National Liberation Army is disbanded. Trajkovski also urged his country's parliament to ratify the internationally mediated peace deal signed almost three weeks ago by both ethnic Albanian and Macedonian political leaders. "The agreement is not perfect, but no agreement ever is," Trajkovski told legislators. "It is the best thing we have right now and it does have many positive points." Macedonian hard-liners are opposed to the deal, saying the country is being forced at gunpoint to overhaul its constitution. Strasho Angelovski, head of an extreme nationalist political party known as MAAK, led a blockade of parliament Friday morning to try to prevent lawmakers getting inside and opening debate on the agreement. The planned morning session was delayed six hours until riot police pushed back the few hundred demonstrators blocking the entrances to parliament. Angelovski said that in particular he was opposed to a provision of the peace accord that would guarantee proportional employment of ethnic Albanians in police and government. He said the new law would "encourage a demographic explosion" of Albanians seeking to further expand their share of government jobs in the future. Inside the parliament, Branko Crvenkovski said his moderate SDSM would support the peace deal, as expected. Officials of the prime minister's VMRO party have also said they will back initial parliamentary measures to move debate on the agreement forward. However, two members of parliament from VMRO addressing the session said they would defy their party leadership and vote against the deal. One of them, Gjorgi Kotevski, said a referendum should decide the fate of the accord because the parliament alone lacks the moral authority to make such sweeping changes. Ethnic Albanian rebels have made the passage of a procedural vote expected by next Tuesday a precondition for further handovers of weapons to NATO. "We expect the Macedonian Parliament to meet its commitments in order to [also] complete the first phase," an NLA Commander known as Cela told the Albanian-language Fakti newspaper. "If parliament does not start implementing the agreement, we will interrupt the operation and we will not continue the second phase of disarmament until the (parliament) meets the obligations foreseen in the agreement." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! 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