World Beat: Macedonia
NATO collects Balkan guns

By Dheeraj Jagadev
Flat Hat Staff Writer

NATO soldiers are in the Balkans for their third mission in six years. They arrived last week to start collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian guerrillas as part of a peace deal and cease-fire negotiation with the help of NATO.

NATO troops started arriving in Macedonia Aug. 22 as part of a 3,500-man force. Their stated mission is the collection of weapons handed over by the ethnic Albanian rebels who have resolved to give up their arms as part of an agreement signed Aug. 13 by Macedonia's leaders.

Great Britain is providing most of the troops for Operation Essential Harvest, as the mission is called, with other units coming from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and the Czech Republic. U.S. troops are providing logistics, intelligence and medical support.

Fighting broke out along Macedonia's border with Kosovo in February, after ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency saying they were fighting for greater rights. The government says ethnic Albanians were fighting for a state of their own. Under the peace plan, meant to end six months of fighting between the rebels and government troops, Macedonia's parliament must enact sweeping reforms to improve the status of the ethnic Albanian minority.

Additionally, the rebels must turn over their weapons to NATO troops within a strict 30-day window. One of the terms of the agreement, which set the stage for the NATO mission, is the rapid hiring of ethnic Albanians by the national police force, which is overwhelmingly Slav and distrusted, if not hated, by the Albanian minority.

There has been a dispute regarding the number of weapons said to be in possession of the rebels. NATO has estimated the number to be around 3,500 and seeks to match and possibly surpass this amount of weaponry. The Macedonian government, on the other hand, estimates the number of weapons to be between 8,000 and 85,000.

Under the agreement, Macedonia's parliament is to ratify constitutional changes expanding the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority as the rebels hand in their arms. The first third of the rebels' weapons are to be handed in by Wednesday, followed by parliamentary action introducing legislation Friday.

NATO troops began gathering guns from guerrillas in Macedonia Monday in spite of the peace mission being overshadowed by the killing of a British soldier. The death of the soldier occurred during an attack on his NATO vehicle by a gang of Macedonian youths.