SKOPJE, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flies into Skopje Thursday to boost international pressure on Macedonian leaders to keep their part of the peace bargain as Albanian fighters hand in weapons to NATO troops.
Straw's trip follows a similar diplomatic sortie by NATO Secretary General George Robertson here Wednesday.
Robertson told Macedonia's political leaders that ethnic Albanian fighters were disarming as promised under a peace agreement and that they now had to overcome their doubts and ratify the accord in parliament. Washington has also urged the parliament to implement the peace deal.
Robertson won a vital pledge from Macedonia's hardline interior minister, Ljube Boskovski, that paramilitary groups would not take revenge on the Albanian fighters once they had surrendered their weapons.
In an address to the Macedonian parliament, Robertson said NATO was well on the way to collecting the promised 3,300 arms within the 30-day time limit, and should have one third of that amount gathered by Friday when the assembly meets again to debate a wider peace agreement. (Read photo caption below)
The August 13 accord, designed to stop an Albanian uprising for equal rights that began in February and forced more than 100,000 people from their homes, was signed by leaders of two Macedonian and two ethnic Albanian parties.
It calls for greater rights for the ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up between a quarter and a third of the population, notably by giving official status to the Albanian language in some areas and bringing more Albanians into the police force.
It also grants an amnesty to most fighters who hand in their arms.
Hardliners in the Macedonian government and some members of parliament remain highly sceptical of the peace accord, suspicious the National Liberation Army (NLA) fighters are giving up only a fraction of their arsenal and plan to keep control of a swathe of territory they hold along the borders with Albania and Kosovo.
The constitutional amendments needed to implement the accord require the approval of two thirds of parliament's 120 members.
The voluntary weapons handover programme supervised by NATO troops, named Operation Essential Harvest, began on Monday.
On Tuesday British Foreign Secretary Straw justified his country's intervention by warning a lengthy conflict in the Balkans would have serious consequences for stability in Europe.
"The lesson of the last 10 years is that the longer a conflict is left in the Balkans, the more difficult and bloody it becomes," Straw said in a television interview.
The foreign secretary's visit follows the killing on Monday of a British paratrooper serving in the NATO mission.
He said in the interview that if the conflict was not halted "the more serious the consequences... for the people of the Balkans but also for everybody across Europe.
However some western politicians and observers fear "mission-creep", a gradual elongation of NATO's stay in Macedonia.
Such fears may not have been assuaged by an interview with Robertson which appeared in the London Financial Times Thursday.
Robertson moved to ease fears that the alliance could become entangled in a lengthy military role in Macedonia, but admitted that the scheduled 30 days may not be enough.
He said the alliance could extend its mission by a "few more days" but insisted it would play no long-term role in Macedonia.
"If the mission of collecting and destroying weapons takes a few more days, then so be it," he said.
"There is simply no discernible long-term role for NATO in Macedonia that would contribute to longer term peace in this conflict -- and every chance that such a presence might encourage divisions along ethnic lines," he added.
PHOTO CAPTION:
German soldiers disembark from a transport plane upon their arrival at Skopje' airport, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2001. The first German troops arrived in Macedonia, joining NATO's 30-day British-led mission to collect and destroy weapons voluntarily handed over by ethnic Albanian fighters. (AP Photo/Richard Lewis)