STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Gunfire was...exchanged in Nikustak, the village where U.S. soldiers serving in the NATO-led force in Macedonia released the rebels they had escorted from Aracinovo...." [Actually, the U.S. soldiers were KFOR troops; that is, ones whose true role is insuring the "rule of law" in Kosovo. That the U.S. NATO troops bailed out the UCK/KLA guerrillas trapped in Aracinovo, then turned their weapons back over to them only to have the terrorists take up where they left off in another location is, I suppose, only to have been expected. As is the concern about US nationals, after some of the latter have made matters definitively unsafe for native Macedonians.] June 27, 2001 U.S. Warns Americans About Macedonia by KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES Associated Press Writer SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonia's president said the Balkan country could have been brought to civil war through rioting triggered by the U.S.-assisted NATO evacuation of ethnic Albanian rebels. President Boris Trajkovski's comment came a day after a convoy of about 20 U.S.-contracted buses, protected by 81 U.S. troops and armed Humvees, transported ethnic Albanian fighters and civilians from a suburb of Macedonia's capital to a mostly ethnic Albanian village to the north. The move sparked rioting and shooting in the capital, Skopje, by thousands of Macedonian Slavs who demanded harsher action against the rebels and an end to outside intervention. ''I do not agree but I understand the revolt of the population,'' Trajkovski said. ''(But) I do not understand why the shooting occurred, why the people and those ... reservists shot at the Macedonian Parliament. The shooting could easily have turned into a civil war.'' In Washington, Bush administration officials said the decision to use American troops to protect the convoy did not indicate a widening U.S. involvement. A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said no shots were fired at the convoy and its evacuation of the rebels defused what he called a dangerous situation. In the wake of the rioting, the U.S. State Department warned Americans on Wednesday not to travel to Macedonia amid rising anti-Western sentiment. Britain issued a similar warning. Elsewhere, the Macedonian army reported exchanges of gunfire along the border with the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Macedonian forces and rebels clashed outside the second-largest city, Tetovo, and a handful of villages in the north. Gunfire was also exchanged in Nikustak, the village where U.S. soldiers serving with the NATO-led force in Macedonia released the rebels they had escorted from Aracinovo, about six miles away. An ethnic Albanian threat to march into major cities also heightened tensions. Commander Sokoli, a rebel leader, said in a phone call from an undisclosed location that there were ''two brigades on the outskirts of Skopje.'' The incidents were the latest in five months of fighting that broke out here when militants began taking over villages near the border with Kosovo -- a Yugoslav province whose population is predominantly ethnic Albanian -- to demand more rights. Since then, more than 100,000 people have fled, with more than 65,000 seeking refuge in Kosovo, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. The continuing unrest is hampering peace efforts by Trajkovski, who wants broad support for the government's fight against ethnic Albanian insurgents. After Monday's riot, he pledged to regain control of rebel-held territory within Macedonia's borders. ''We have to be united,'' Trajkovski said Tuesday, calling for ''strong nerves and calm.'' ''We are not fighting against one another. This is what the enemy wishes. If we accept that way, defeat will be inevitable,'' he said in taped remarks broadcast by state media Tuesday evening. After Monday's U.S.-led evacuation, the Skopje crowd vented its anger on the international community, blaming NATO troops for escorting the rebels out of the village. A picture of Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign affairs and security official, was burned, and a vehicle of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe parked near the Parliament was destroyed. Rioters also dismantled the interior minister's car, hurled stones through the windows of Parliament and fired automatic weapons at the building. Police and army troops did not intervene. Trajkovski said the deal to remove the rebels from Aracinovo, which had been under rebel control for more than two weeks, ''was the most efficient way to get rid of the terrorists without any victims.'' He was trying to preserve his peace plan, which calls for amnesty for most rebels who disarm voluntarily and greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions. The lack of progress toward peace has dismayed European Union leaders, who have been trying for months to persuade the Macedonian Slav leadership and political leaders of the ethnic Albanian minority to compromise and avert civil war in this country of 2 million people. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
