NATO chief due in Macedonia as Albanian Fighters Handover Weapons

15/04/2001| IslamWeb

SKOPJE, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -NATO Secretary General George Robertson was due here Wednesday for talks with Macedonian political leaders, many of whom are critical of the alliance's ongoing mission to collect 3,300 weapons from ethnic Albanian fighters.
Ethnic Albanian fighters surrendered heavy weapons Tuesday on the second day of NATO's arms collection mission while refugees returned to homes near the conflict zone believing they were safe. (Read photo caption)
But it remained unclear whether the alliance would manage to gather a third of the 3,300 arms by Friday, as pledged, when parliament meets to debate ratifying a peace accord reached with ethnic Albanian leaders on August 13.
NATO spokesman Major Barry Johnson said Robertson would "reinforce with the political leaders here NATO's commitment to this process".
A Macedonian diplomatic source said Robertson would meet with President Boris Trajkovski, before holding talks with the prime minister and foreign minister, then the leaders of the four main parties in parliament.
He will also meet parliamentary speaker Stojan Andov, one of the key figures in getting the agreement ratified, and make an address to the assembly, the source said.
The Macedonian government believes NATO should aim to collect 60,000 weapons, according to a strategic affairs adviser to Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.
Robertson is also visiting to show support for the thousands of soldiers involved in Operation Essential Harvest and see how the mission is progressing on the ground, Johnson said.
Some 3,300 NATO troops were reported to have arrived in Macedonia already with more on the way.
The arms mission is aimed at ending an armed Albanian revolt for equal rights that began in February.
Representatives of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) surrendered three surface-to-air missiles to British troops Tuesday in an operation witnessed by journalists taken to the site by NATO.
A line of about 50 black-clad Albanian fighters, including women, formed in front of a three-storey house in Brodec, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the northwest town of Tetovo, where the fighters handed in their weapons one-by-one to British paratroopers.
Apart from the anti-aircraft missiles, journalists counted about 100 assault rifles, some light mortars and rocket-propelled grenades being handed in as the operation slowly progressed.
The United States pronounced itself pleased by the smooth progress of the NATO weapons collection mission.
"We're now into the second day of weapons collection in Tetovo by NATO; we consider that the process is going well," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington.
"The process is a credible effort to create a peaceful climate for necessary democratic changes."
On Monday, the NLA handed in about 400 weapons, including 300 assault rifles and almost 100 machineguns, leading NATO officials to declare the first day of Operation Essential Harvest a success.
But Macedonia's media assailed the results, with the daily Dvevnik describing the weapons as "museum pieces, mostly of Chinese or Russian origin."
The newspaper quoted government spokesman Antonio Milososki as saying that the NATO operation "is not Essential Harvest, but Theatrical Harvest."
"If the international community wants peace in Macedonia, it should collect all the arms," Dvevnik said in an editorial. Government officials have said that anywhere from 6,000 to 85,000 weapons should be gathered.
Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency warned that increasing numbers of refugees are returning home to Macedonia from the neighbouring Yugoslav province of Kosovo, even though it is not safe to do so yet.
The UNHCR said in a statement here that up to 30,000 refugees have now returned, with the rate increasing since the weekend, and that people were going back to their homes in rural areas for the first time.
The organisation said it was concerned that NATO's operation was lulling the refugees into a false sense of security.
"Despite the signing of a framework peace agreement on August 13, shooting incidents occur almost daily around the mainly-ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo.
Under the agreement, most of the fighters who demobilise will be granted an amnesty and the constitution will be changed to give the Albanian language official status in some areas and provide more minority jobs.
But the agreement needs to be passed with a two-thirds majority, and Robertson faces a political battle to convince parliament to implement the accord, given that the government has never accepted NATO's arms assessment.
PHOTO CAPTION:
An Albanian fighter plays a flute as he sits among his comrades who wait to hand over weapons at a collection point set up in a house in the village of Brodec, near the town of Tetovo, August 28, 2001. NATO continued Operation Essential Harvest collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian fighters. (Petr Josek/Reuters)