Weapons dispute threatens Macedonia mission

A disagreement over weapons in Macedonia has delayed NATO’s mission to help disarm the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army.

The Macedonian Government claims the rebel army has 85,000 weapons, but the guerrillas have said they only have 2,000. NATO has now asked both sides to reach a deal before the weekend to enable Western troops to collect voluntarily disarmed weapons next week.

The NATO mission is part of a peace plan aimed at ending a six-month ethnic Albanian insurgency in northern Macedonia.

The NLA took up arms in February in pursuit of equal rights for the country’s ethnic Albanian minority, who account for about a third of Macedonia’s two million people.

Although the rebels have said they are ready to end their struggle, the Government fears they will begin another rebellion in an attempt to liberate a part of the country and unite it with Kosovo and, ultimately, a Greater Albania.

The NLA is believed to have received most of its weapons from the now-defunct Kosovo Liberation Army. This rebel force also agreed to hand over its arms to NATO, but in the end it merely decommissioned thousands of old-fashioned rifles and not the weapons it used to fight Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian army.

A NATO spokesman, Major General Gunnar Lange, said today that the symbolism of decommissioning is more important than the actual number of weapons handed in.

“The rebels can re-arm. They can start fighting again,” he said. “It’s a lot more important that the trust and confidence that comes with the political process . . . give them no wish to re-arm and start fighting again.”