Posted on 01/30/2002 5:16:50 PM PST by enrg
NATO's peacekeeping mission in Macedonia will be prolonged to allow a truce between government forces and the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) to be consolidated, the force's German commander announced.
General Heinz-Georg Keerl said, in an interview published Wednesday in the paper of the German army in the former Yugoslavia, that a new NATO mission would amount to a prolongation of the current NATO-led operation Amber Fox.
"How that mandate will be prolonged is under discussion at all levels of NATO in Brussels, military and political, as well as in the European capitals which may assume leadership," of the peacekeeping force, he added.
General Keerl said that it had not been decided whether Germany would continue in its role as head of the operation, whose mandate expores on March 27.
Last week, Macedonia's Foreign Affairs Minister Slobodan Casule lamented that the international community had failed to keep a promise to stop violence in many areas of the Balkan state and its neighbours.
He said rebel arms remained in circulation despite a NATO-led mission to disarm the National Liberation Army guerrillas, as part of a Western-brokered peace plan to end a half-year insurgency.
Last August and September a 45-day NATO mission, Essential Harvest, gathered 3,000 arms from ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
Since the end of Essential Harvest a 700-strong NATO peacekeeping force has been deployed in Mission Amber Fox, focused on monitoring a fragile peace after last year's seven-month long ethnic Albanian uprising.
Keerl said there were no signs of the Albanian rebels planning any fresh attacks "even if some extremists remain ready for action".
However some people within the Macedonian government and the population at large seem in favour of a new conflict, a stance which does not contribute to the aim of re-introducing police, rather than military, control in the area, he added.
Along with Germany, the biggest contributor to Amber Fox, ten other countries are participating in the NATO-led mission: Belgium, Canada, denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Turkey.
What a surprise!!!
Keerl said there were no signs of the Albanian rebels planning any fresh attacks "even if some extremists remain ready for action".
Of course not..... why would anyone think that....</sarcasm off>
However some people within the Macedonian government and the population at large seem in favour of a new conflict
ohhhh..... but of course...... set the Macedonians up before the war starts, and then when the NLA/ALA starts the war, you have your bad guys and agreement breakers....
could it be anyone else? or even better.... has it ever been anyone else?
Maybe if they literally had been collecting arms form Albanian guerrillas, they wouldn't remain such a threat. Let's see how the 'Bean General' does...
VRN
But wait, the Albanians don't have any more weapons to attack with, remember NATO disarmed them all in operation Essential Harvest? (/sarcasm)
These are the left over NATO scum of clintons 1999 deceitful humanatitarian war that are edging away from the US war on terrorism. They prefer making war against unarmed, peaceful Serb and Macedonian civilians...and eventually Greek civilians...than confronting murdering psychotic islamic fundamentalists who intend to destroy western civilization.
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