[ALBSA-Info] Macedonia Tension Played Down

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Macedonia Tension Played Down

By ROBERT BURNS
  
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and NATO's top 
diplomat sought to play down the significance Thursday of renewed violence 
along the Kosovo-Macedonia border, where U.S. and other peacekeeping troops 
have skirmished with ethnic Albanian insurgents. 

``We want to prevent what can be limited, localized skirmishes becoming 
bigger or spilling over into the wider region,'' Lord Robertson, the NATO 
secretary-general, said at a joint Pentagon news conference with Rumsfeld. 

On another topic, Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is eager to assure 
the European allies that its proposed defense against ballistic missiles 
would protect Europeans as well as Americans. He said he has stopped using 
the word ``national'' in the term ``national missile defense,'' which is what 
the Pentagon has called its program for several years. 

``What's `national' depends on where you live,'' he said. ``The United States 
has friends and allies that we're linked very tightly to.'' 

The missile defense system pursued by the Clinton administration was designed 
to protect only the 50 U.S. states. Bush has said he wants a system that will 
provide broader protection, to include the European allies and other nations 
friendly to the United States, as well as U.S. troops abroad. 

Before meeting with Robertson, Rumsfeld held talks with German Defense 
Minister Rudolf Scharping, who later told reporters that his government was 
pleased the Bush administration is moving away from a ``national'' approach 
to a broader vision of defense against ballistic missiles. 

Also Thursday, the White House announced that Bush will visit NATO 
headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in June to discuss trans-Atlantic security 
issues. White House officials said his visit will include talks with 
Robertson and allied officials but it will not be a NATO summit meeting of 
leaders of the 19 member countries. The last NATO summit was in April 1999 to 
mark the alliance's 50th anniversary. 

At the Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld said the situation along the 
Kosovo-Macedonia border is now ``relatively stable,'' although he described 
the Balkans as ``a difficult part of the world'' to keep the peace. 

Rumsfeld was asked whether American forces in Kosovo are running the risk of 
being drawn into a shooting war along the Macedonian border. 

``That's one of the risks of a peacekeeper,'' Rumsfeld said. ``Shooting is 
shooting, and it has been going on throughout the period that (peacekeeping) 
troops have been there in one level or another, and it's been relatively 
minor and it remains relatively modest.'' 

Robertson told the Pentagon news conference that while the upsurge in 
violence is cause for concern, he believes an increase in peacekeeping 
patrols along the border area with Macedonia this week is having the desired 
effect of reducing violence. 

``Their robust presence, I believe, is having an effect on those people who 
use that whole border area - ill-defined as it is, heavily mined as it is - 
as a sort of adventure playground for violence,'' Robertson said. 

``Some of the upsurge in violence has been to do with the fact that these 
insurgents, these ethnic Albanian armed groups - and others - know that their 
time is coming to an end,'' Robertson added. 

On Thursday, Macedonian troops drove ethnic Albanian insurgents from their 
stronghold on the border with Kosovo. The American troops in Kosovo are part 
of a multinational effort to curb the flow of weapons and fighters from 
Kosovo, the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian province in the Yugoslav republic 
of Serbia, into northern Macedonia. 

Although the rebels have not publicly stated their goals, it is assumed they 
are fighting for self-rule in areas of Macedonia near Kosovo that have large 
ethnic Albanian populations. Albanians make up about 25 percent of 
Macedonia's population. 

Rumsfeld said he supports NATO's decision Thursday to allow Serb troops back 
into a strip of the buffer zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia as a 
means of cutting off ethnic Albanian infiltrators crossing through an area 
where the borders of Macedonia, Kosovo and the rest of Serbia meet. 

On the Net: 

NATO Kosovo Force: http://www.kforonline.com