STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [The moment either of these two show up at the Skopje airport it's time to head for the bomb shelters.] Saturday June 30 11:10 AM ET United States Appoints Special Envoy to Macedonia By Anatoly Verbin SKOPJE (Reuters) - The United States announced on Saturday the appointment of a special envoy to Macedonia, beefing up international efforts to prevent a new war from engulfing the Balkans. The U.S. embassy in Skopje said James Pardew would arrive on Sunday and work alongside European Union peace envoy Francois Leotard who began work in the Macedonian capital on Thursday. These two appointments reflect growing international involvement in Macedonia, where an ethnic Albanian rebellion, which government forces have been unable to quell, threatens to unleash all-out civil war and a wider Balkan conflagration. Unlike Leotard, Pardew has Balkans experience as a senior adviser on the Balkans at the State Department. He has been involved in pacifying Serbia's Presevo Valley where another ethnic Albanian guerrilla group had confronted Serbian troops before agreeing to disarm. In March, Pardew told an ethnic Albanian party in Kosovo to stop backing the National Liberation Army rebels in Macedonia. He has also advocated a decision, ordered by President Bush earlier this week, to impose a travel ban on ethnic Albanians from Macedonia and Kosovo suspected of links with the guerrillas. NATO FORCE Army spokesman Blagoja Markovski said both northeastern and northwestern crisis zones were generally quiet for most of the day with the exception of a brief exchange of fire between troops and the rebels near the city of Tetovo. In Kosovo's provincial capital Pristina, NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping forces said nine suspected rebels had been detained on Friday and another 48 on Saturday. All were being questioned. On Friday, NATO said in Brussels it had given final approval to a plan to send up to 3,000 peacekeeping troops to Macedonia to collect and destroy the weapons of ethnic Albanian rebels. The force would only be deployed once a lasting cease-fire had been declared and a political agreement reached between Macedonian political parties -- one of the tasks facing the new EU and U.S. envoys. ``The ball is now firmly in the court of the Macedonian government to deliver on the political dialogue and the cease-fire in order to allow NATO�s help to come into effect,�� NATO Secretary-General George Robertson told Reuters in London. Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders have been discussing ways to improve minority rights to undercut the four-month-old rebellion, but talks have stalled. The latest meeting was disrupted on Monday when armed police reservists stormed into parliament during a nationalist riot and participants in the talks escaped through a back door. Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski said on Friday he had ordered demobilization of some police reservists. The Albanians are demanding a more formalized international participation, and are sure to welcome U.S. involvement. The Macedonian side has so far resisted, fearing it will play into their opponents' hands. Leotard made his task more difficult when he said on Tuesday the Macedonian government should talk to the rebels. He later clarified his comments to make clear the EU policy -- in favor of negotiations with the one-third minority's political leaders, but not the guerrillas -- remained unchanged. In a move of immense significance for the Balkans, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, blamed for much of the ethnic cleansing and brutal conquest [like Abraham Lincoln "conquered" Mississippi and set up a separatist state in West Virginia] in a decade of warfare, was transferred from Belgrade to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague on Friday. [And the moment this Nacht und Nebel abduction occurred peace and harmony returned to all of Macedonia.] NATO has had what it calls ``technical�� contacts with Macedonia�s ethnic Albanian insurgents [technical, indeed, as in provision of insurgency training, weapons, logistics, maps, etc.], brokering a deal this week to end an army onslaught in a strategic village. NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur told Reuters in Brussels that 15 of the 19 NATO member countries, including the United States, had pledged to take part in the operation under which 3,000 NATO troops would come to help disarm Macedonia�s rebels. The government of one of the poorest states in Europe which has recently spent large amounts of money buying weaponry [how irresponsible of them, given the circumstances] introduced a war tax on all non-cash transactions in Macedonia to cover a widening budget deficit. Macedonia's Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski left on a visit to Ukraine which has already sold Macedonia helicopter gunships. The tax goes into effect on Sunday and extends to the end of the year. It is supposed to bring to state coffers about 2.3 billion denars ($30 million), the state MIA news agency said. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
