Role for UK force in new Balkans hot spot Christian Jennings In Skopje BRITISH soldiers would be among thousands of NATO troops sent to Macedonia under a plan to oversee the disarmament of ethnic Albanian rebels, western officials said yesterday. A plan outlined by the Ministry of Defence includes sending a British battle group of up to 1,000 men, including troops from the Parachute Regiment, and an armoured reconnaissance regiment. NATO said the plan would only go ahead if a political accord is reached between the government and the rebels under which Albanian guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (NLA) agree to disarm. A NATO official insisted the disarmament force would "will not be an open-ended mission." Diplomatic sources said a 30-day limit could be fixed for the operation. "They would be just coming to collect weapons and nothing else," he stressed. In Washington, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson also underlined the force would only follow a "durable cease-fire" and was not another Balkans peace-keeping mission. "This is not some military force going in to fight. It is an offer by the NATO countries to be prepared to put in place a NATO-led force that will take the arms and uniforms of all the armed groups" who have signalled their readiness to disarm, he said. But the Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovski, said last night that six days of talks between political parties aimed at agreeing on a peace plan had broken down. Government officials claimed the Albanian parties had repeatedly changed their negotiating position during the talks. Last night further fighting between rebels and government troops seemed inevitable. A French Ministry of Defence official confirmed that the NATO plan envisages sending up to 3,000 European troops to Macedonia within three weeks. The troops would be drawn from European nations, not from the 45,000-strong KFOR peacekeeping force stationed in Kosovo. Advance parties of NATO officers, including a three-man British team, are already in Skopje assisting the Macedonian government in it�s planning. The NATO team in Skopje also includes Peter Fieth, the official who was credited a large role in the disarmament and demilitarisation of the ethnic Albanian rebel group in southern Serbia�s Presevo valley last month. The Macedonian rebels� five-month insurgency campaign has brought them within easy mortar range of the capital and its airport. But vital political talks in Skopje aimed at uniting Macedonia�s fragile multiethnic coalition government behind a peace plan have been bogged down for days. "Unfortunately the talks are not going in any direction, they are going in two different directions," said Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski as talks entered their sixth day. The interior minister, Ljube Boskovski, from the Prime Minister�s ethnic Slav party, stormed out of a crucial demilitarisation planning meeting, accusing the remaining Slav party and two ethnic Albanian political parties in the coalition of being soft on the rebels. "I don�t support this policy of capitulation, I am in favour of energetic decisions and for the restoration of peace by our own forces, without the help of the international community," he said. NATO, the European Union and western governments are putting immense pressure on Macedonia�s government to reach a political solution designed to avoid full-scale civil war, but the government�s repeated assertions that it will not talk with the rebels means that the chances of a negotiated disarmament programme are currently slim. Despite a unilateral cease-fire agreed last week, fresh fighting broke out early yesterday between rebels and government forces around the rebel-held town of Aracinovo, three miles from the edges of Skopje, and near the village of Slupcane. A string of rebel-held villages have been under constant government tank and artillery fire for weeks. Two civilians were reported killed overnight by Macedonian army shelling. The government�s capacity to attack rebel positions was strengthened with the arrivial in Skopje of four ex-Soviet ground-attack jets from the Ukraine in a bargain-basement arms deal that also included four helicopters. The planes cost �150,000 each. http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/world.cfm?id=83207 Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
