-Caveat Lector- From http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/238/nation/NATO_enters_a_well_armed_l andP.shtml }}>Begin THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING NATO enters a well-armed land Smuggling bolsters Macedonian rebels By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff, 8/26/2001 NEAR TETOVO, Macedonia - Meet Commander Leka, a battalion chief of the ethnic Albanian rebels who control this area. He wears a camouflage uniform with the signature red patch of the Albanian National Liberation Army. An AK-47 assault rifle is slung over his shoulder and his ammunition vest bulges with two full clips of bullets, two 9mm semiautomatic pistols, and a hand grenade. As NATO's latest mission in the Balkans begins tomorrow with a voluntary collection of rebel weapons - a move intended to stop a war here before it starts - Leka says with a smile that he and the roughly 2,000-member NLA will hand over their arsenal and ''comply 100 percent.'' Then Commander Leka, who goes only by his nom de guerre, reached for a hip holster and unsheathed an 18-inch knife with a bone handle which he describes as his favorite weapon, adding, ''But I don't ever give up my knife.'' The limited NATO mission with a self-imposed deadline of 30 days is, to its supporters, a noble effort to derail another runaway conflict in the Balkans. To its critics, this is a hopelessly naive endeavor destined to fail. Even the most senior planners of the operation acknowledge that NATO can never stop the easy flow of weapons to rebel forces along the mountainous borders of Kosovo and Albania. According to analysts and diplomats, the region is awash in weapons. A report released in April by the International Crisis Group, a policy organization that attempts to prevent conflict, cites weapons estimates for Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo of 280,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 1 million antitank missiles, 3.1 million hand grenades, 1 billion rounds of ammunition, and 24 million machine guns. Jane's Defense Weekly confirmed in report Friday that ''the NLA has a very secure supply line to western Macedonia'' of weapons which include surface- to-air missiles, 120mm mortars, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and antitank rockets. The publication also estimates that the NLA has 3,000 fighters and perhaps an equal number of volunteers who are not in uniform but mostly have access to weapons. An array of defense specialists as well as NATO and Macedonian defense officials interviewed by the Globe last week confirm that even if NATO succeeds in collecting the rebels' weapons, the NLA could rearm in a matter of weeks or even days should it decide that the political process is not achieving its demands for constitutional changes that guarantee rights for ethnic Albanians. Commander Leka and others know there are a variety of sources and trade routes into Macedonia. The primary route is through Albania, where hundreds of thousands of weapons were looted from Albanian Army depots in 1997 and where criminal gangs conduct a flourishing market in the weapons trade. Weapons have also continued to flow over a criss-crossing mountain paths from Kosovo into Macedonia, especially through the areas of Radusa and Vesala, according to a high-ranking official in the Macedonian defense department. Macedonian officials claim that NATO's interdiction efforts - which were stepped up in June as part of a US-led mission known as ''Operation Eagle'' - along the Kosovo border have been largely unsuccessful in stemming the flow of weapons that fueled the fighting in Macedonia in July and early August. This is one of the reasons the Macedonian government has been skeptical of the NATO mission, and one of the reasons why the American forces have a low profile in ''Operation Essential Harvest.'' There are only about 300 American soldiers involved in this NATO operation, which is deploying more than 4,000 troops. British soldiers have taken the lead role. NATO officials argue that their interdiction efforts have been successful, and that increased patrols along the Kosovo border in recent months have brought in 2,000 weapons and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition as well as the arrest of several arms dealers. There have been reports in recent days of NLA weapons flowing in the other direction - out of Macedonia and into Kosovo. NATO has confirmed some of these reports, and specialists theorize that the moves are an attempt by the NLA to hide its best weapons before the NATO mission begins. Another trail of weapons to the Albanian rebels in Macedonia comes from truck convoys into the country from neighboring Bulgaria, according to Jane's Defense Weekly. Sometimes, the greed of arms dealers even rises above the seething ethnic hatreds in this region. Jane's also cites reports of weapons sales to Albanian rebels from Serbia. Corrupt officials in the Zastava arms factory in Serbia have made black market deals with rebels, says Jane's. Commander Leka agrees. And to prove it, he handed his assault rifle across a table to show its unmistakable stamp: ''Made in Zastava.'' ''The Serbs give us better prices than our brothers the Albanians,'' he said. ''If the Macedonian government does not live up to the agreement, we can get more weapons. When we started this we had to get weapons, and if we need to continue it we will just get more.'' The large supply of weapons has pushed prices down, and the rebels are backed by wealthy Albanian nationalists in the region and around the world, including the United States. Kalashnikov assault rifles, for example, go for about $150, according to Leka. Mortars can be had for a fraction of that price. Still, NATO officials insist that the success or failure of Operation Essential Harvest will be defined by whether it can build enough confidence to help the Macedonian government and the rebels to move toward a political solution. At their daily press briefings, NATO officials acknowledge that their presence here is also about ''building confidence.'' Colonel Paul Edwards, NATO's chief of the operation, said yesterday, ''No one is going to remove every weapon in this region.'' ''I come back to our position that'' the rebels' offer to disarm ''is a statement of intent'' that they seek to pursue their goals in the political process and not through fighting. ''The collection process is but one part of a process heading toward peace,'' he added. NATO will collect weapons at about 15 sites in three regions. Officials have pledged to collect one-third of the rebels' weapons by Friday, when the Macedonian Parliament is expected to introduce legislation to change its constitution and local laws to guarantee the rights of ethnic Albanians, who make up roughly 30 percent of Macedonia's 2 million citizens. The Macedonians are skeptical of the weapons hand-over. They say they want a real end to the hostilities, and many dismiss the NATO mission as a charade that benefits the alliance's public affairs department but does little to solve the issues behind the conflict. It is not clear that the bill would pass in Parliament. Fighting broke out along Macedonia's border with the Serbian province of Kosovo in February, after ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency, announcing they were fighting for greater rights. Hard-liners in the government say ethnic Albanians have their eyes on a state of their own. After an Aug. 13 peace agreement was forged and a fragile cease-fire seemed to be taking hold, NATO's ruling council authorized a total of about 4,700 troops to help with disarmament of the rebels. That includes about 3,500 actively involved in the collection of arms and others in administrative and logistical roles, the alliance said Friday. By far the most explosive issue surrounding this operation, and one that presents the possibility that it could collapse, is the widely differing assessment of how many weapons the NLA actually has. The NLA has said that it has 2,500 weapons. The more moderate elements of the Macedonian government have said the rebels have no fewer than 8,500, and hard-liners have trotted out a number of 85,000. NATO officials balked yesterday at publicizing the number that they say they have come up with, but do not deny published reports that it is ''more than 3,000.'' Yesterday Macedonia's prime minister, Lupco Georgievski, said that figure is far too low, dismissing it as ''ridiculous.'' Ed Joseph, an American analyst for the International Crisis Group, said, ''Weapons equal time.'' ''By collecting weapons, NATO can slow everything down and give the political process time to move forward,'' he said. ''If they can delay the momentum toward a war here until the fall, that means something.'' Autumn in the Balkans brings raw weather and difficult fighting conditions. But yesterday as the NATO forces braced for their new mission the muggy heat of late summer still lingered over the region. 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