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NATO Sets Deadline to Launch Macedonia Operation
BRUSSELS, Aug 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A NATO operation to collect weapons from Albanian activists in Macedonia will begin at 10:00 GMT (5 a.m. EST) Wednesday if none of the 19 allies object, a NATO spokesman announced late Tuesday.
He said 19 NATO ambassadors - the North Atlantic Council, or NAC - agreed on the so-called "silence procedure" after hearing a report from the supreme allied commander for Europe, U.S. General Joseph Ralston, that conditions for "Operation Essential Harvest" had been met.
The silence procedure is standard in major NATO decisions, giving member capitals time to study the decision, and then assent to it via their silence.
Ralston, who spent several hours in Macedonia on Monday, told ambassadors the fragile week-old ceasefire between government and activist forces was holding as well as could be expected, a NATO source said.
But even as NAC took the decision, a cloud hung over Macedonia as an explosion devastated a 14th century Orthodox church earlier in the day.
Skopje officials accused Albanian activists for the attack, calling it a "serious provocation" that casts a shadow over NATO efforts to implement a peace accord in the troubled Balkan state.
Defense ministry spokesman Marjan Gjurovski said they had "mined" the church inside a 14th century Orthodox monastery in the northwest village of Lesok, which lies in activist -controlled territory.
"It was a serious provocation, an attempt to introduce religious hatred into the war," a defense ministry source said.
The majority of Macedonians are Orthodox Christian, while the Albanians, who make up around a third of the population, are Muslim.
A BBC online report said one of its correspondents who visited the site saw that most of the church was reduced to rubble, with the front façade remaining intact and two towers still standing.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson called the destruction of the church "deplorable" and "totally unacceptable", but cautioned against vengeance.
"I strongly urge the population to resist any calls for retaliation," he said in a statement. "We are at a crucial moment, with the destiny of...Macedonia being played out and a peaceful solution in prospect.
"The long-term stability of the country depends on tolerance and I appeal for restraint…" he said.
On August 8th, angry Macedonians set fire to a mosque in the southern town of Prilep after 10 soldiers were killed in an ambush.
EU envoy to the Balkans, Francois Leotard, condemned the bombing as well, calling it a serious attack on attempts to reconcile the Macedonian communities.
"Those who are responsible will carry before the international community and before history the crushing responsibility of a grave attack on the reconciliation between the different communities in the Republic of Macedonia," Leotard said in a statement.
Despite the church's destruction, Tuesday's decision means that unless any of the 19 allies veto the operation by the deadline, the remainder of the 3,500-strong force will begin deploying in Macedonia Wednesday.
They will be joining a 400-strong British advance party that is already setting up headquarters in the capital, Skopje, and collection points around the country.
The NATO source said that despite Tuesday's decision, some of the most powerful of the 19 allies - namely Britain, Germany and France - were "chilly" to the full deployment idea, unconvinced that the fragile ceasefire would hold.
"Surprisingly, for all of its pomp and circumstance, the U.K. has been very cautious in their approach. One of their insistences is to have all of Ralston's reports in writing, and to have 24 hours for London to look at them," said the source.
Under an agreement signed in Skopje last week, Essential Harvest is to collect weapons voluntarily surrendered by the Albanian activists who have been fighting Macedonian government forces.
But NATO had set certain conditions before sending in the full complement, the most critical of which is a durable ceasefire between government troops and Albanian activists.
In a further sign that tensions remain high despite the ceasefire agreement, a Macedonian soldier was shot dead in the village of Rasce by one of his own troops who mistook him for a "rebel".
And an online BBC article reported that five members of an Albanian Muslim family were shot dead in Kosovo on Monday evening, according to U.N. officials in the capital of Pristina.
The couple, identified as Hamsa Hajra, 50, his wife Miradie, 45, and four of their children - a son aged 22 and daughters aged 16, 14 and nine - according to a U.N. spokesman, were traveling in a car when they were stopped about 12 miles west of Pristina and attacked by unidentified gunmen with machine guns, the BBC report said.
The spokesman, Andrea Angelli, said in the report, "The attackers fired so many times that the car is riddled with bullets."
The couple's 16-year-old daughter, Pranvera, was apparently left for dead, but was the only survivor of the attack, the report said.
The BBC said that there is not yet any word on a motive or on arrests.
According to the BBC article, there has been sporadic violence between Albanians and Kosovar Serbs ever since Kosovo came under U.N. administration after NATO's 1999 campaign drove out Serb forces.
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