arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Task in Macedonia is far from over, Hoon admits

Paul Beaver and Christian Jennings in Skopje
The Scotsman

NATO TROOPS may need to stay on in Macedonia beyond the end of the time-limit on their 30-day mission to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, and the US special envoy, James Pardew, said yesterday.

Confirming Monday's exclusive report in The Scotsman, Mr Hoon, visiting Macedonia, said NATO's mission could move into a second phase to provide security in the country after the disarmament process.

"Any follow-on operation is something that will have to be looked at in the success of the operation to collect weapons," he said.

Flanked by dozens of maroon-bereted troops from the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, at their base at Camp Arnhem set beside a motorway outside the Macedonian capital, Mr Hoon said the security of international monitors was one of the main issues concerning NATO as it decided whether to extend its mission.

Mr Pardew, Washington's special envoy to Macedonia, said increased security would be needed for civilian monitors who would oversee a ceasefire after rebel weapons have all been collected.

"The issue is how to ensure the security of an increased civilian monitoring mission," said Mr Pardew from Vienna, where he was attending a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that would provide international monitors to oversee implementation of Macedonia's fragile peace accord.

Mr Hoon's visit, following hard on the heels of that of the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, last week, indicates the political importance that preventing another Balkans civil war has to the government.

NATO countries, with over 70,000 men already overstretched on two large-scale deployments in Kosovo and Bosnia, are reluctant to become embroiled in a third costly mission in the Balkans.

Yet security officials say that after the end of Operation Essential Harvest on 27 September there will be a yawning security vacuum in Macedonia if 4,000 NATO troops depart immediately.

After eight months of a low-intensity guerrilla conflict between Macedonians and Albanians that has left nearly 100 people killed, hundreds wounded and up to 150,000 displaced from their homes, nobody is confident that violence will cease.

A senior British official in Skopje said the moderate Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovsky, "has had a hard slog to bring together the warring factions in his party and the parliament as a whole, especially with an election just six months away.

"There are still members of the Macedonian cabinet who believe that the fight with the Albanian insurgents could be won with more money."

Macedonia's parliament reconvened yesterday after two days of enforced silence, as MPs decided to continue debating the ratification of the "Framework Agreement for Peace", agreed earlier this month between Macedonian and Albanian political parties after months of talks.

The hardline nationalist speaker, Stojan Andov, had disrupted the parliamentary session, accusing Albanian rebels of continuing to harass civilians and preventing Macedonian displaced people from returning to their homes.

NATO officials have already identified the prime minister, Ljubco Georglevski, and the defence minister as hardliners who want a military solution to the insurgency even at the risk of civil war.

If the Macedonian parliament ratifies the peace plan, constitutional changes that guarantee greater rights for the country's ethnic Albanian minority could come into effect by September.

If it does not, the conflict will continue. But Macedonian sources say that this year's defence budget has already been spent on buying Ukrainian arms for cash, including attack helicopters, armoured vehicles and small arms. Local mobile telephone revenue from the state supplier, Mobimak, is said to have been transferred to the defence budget to make ends meet.

Though Mr Hoon confirmed that the government is examining sending troops back to Macedonia after the end of the 30 days collection period, this, he said, would be to train troops in counter-insurgency.

"[Prime Minister] Trajkovsky is selling the family silver to pay for a war that they can't win," said the British source. "We keep trying to explain the realities of counter-insurgency with our century of experience, but they just don't listen. The local army has neither the men nor equipment for a war. With no real training in fighting insurgency, the troops don't have the self-confidence either."

Sources said that despite the likelihood of an extended mission, 16 Air Assault Brigade, the current British headquarters of the NATO operation, is unlikely to remain in Macedonia after the post-collection clean-up.

At the Greek-run NATO base at Krivolak in southern Macedonia yesterday, troops displayed 1,210 weapons collected from Albanian rebels in the last week, just over a third of the target figure of 3,300. The troops were under no illusions that they will collect every weapon held by the Albanian self-styled National Liberation Army (NLA) in the 30-day period. A senior officer said the weapons recovered to date were divided into three lots: "A third are useless, a third are well cared for and a third are vintage. There's even a water-cooled Vickers machine gun that the British Special Operations Executive dropped to Marshal Tito's partisan forces in 1943."

Last week French and British troops were impressed with the number of prestige weapons surrendered, including surface-to-air missiles and sniper rifles. "We can't collect everything, but we are fully aware what it means to an NLA insurgent to give up his weapon when every male over 16 has a weapon of some sort at home. We know this is not the disbanding of the NLA," said the British officer.