[ALBSA-Info] NATO's Robertson Meets Top U.S. Officials

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

NATO's Robertson Meets Top U.S. Officials


WASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson met 
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday at the start of talks on 
Washington's role in the Atlantic alliance and peacekeeping in the troubled 
Balkans.

After the Pentagon meeting, Robertson was to go to the White House for a 
meeting with President George W. Bush amid escalating violence by ethnic 
Albanian separatists in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo and neighboring 
Macedonia.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the talks would include ``a host of 
issues that are important to the NATO alliance,'' ranging from Bush's planned 
U.S. National Missile Defense -- a subject that has raised major concern in 
Europe -- to the European Union's plan to form its own rapid-reaction 
military force.

Asked whether a recent flare-up of violence in Kosovo had raised concerns 
over a quagmire enveloping the U.S. military peacekeeping commitment in the 
Balkans, Fleischer said:

``The discussion with Lord Robertson will be broad and will focus on a host 
of transatlantic issues -- and I anticipate obligations in the Balkans will 
be one of those.''

KEY ISSUES OF CONCERN

Two major issues of concern for the 19-member alliance have been U.S. 
commitment to the peacekeeping force and American support of Europe's 
proposed military force.

But Secretary of State Colin Powell last week helped allay concern about 
continued American participation in Balkans peacekeeping. ``We went in 
together; we will come out together,'' Powell told reporters at NATO 
headquarters.

The United States has 5,600 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo and another 4,400 
in Bosnia.

The Washington talks came as the NATO allies agreed in Brussels on Thursday 
to allow the controlled return of Serbian security forces to a buffer zone 
along a part of the Macedonian border where ethnic Albanian gunmen have 
occupied territory.

NATO would oversee Serbian deployments into territory that has been 
off-limits to the Yugoslav Army since NATO fixed the buffer zone around 
Kosovo in June 1999 after driving marauding Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo 
with a bombing campaign.

The alliance would keep a tight check on the reins as well-armed Serbian 
forces move back to an area where only policemen with pistols have been 
allowed.

The Serbian forces would be given the green light to move into the three-mile 
(five-km) wide zone where it adjoins the border with Macedonia, leaving an 
unguarded gateway which has been exploited by ethnic Albanian gunmen.

Ethnic Albanian separatist forces occupied a stretch of the buffer zone in 
southern Serbia last year and began launching attacks on police in the 
Presevo Valley. Recently, gunmen seized adjacent Macedonian land, apparently 
exploiting the gate created by NATO's no-go order to Belgrade.

WELL-ARMED SEPARATISTS

The rebels are armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade 
launchers. They are not believed to possess sophisticated weapons such as 
shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

Powell's comments on the U.S. commitment to keep peacekeepers in the Balkans 
as long as they were needed were the firmest given by the new Bush 
administration.

In previous statements on the subject, the United States has said it would 
not withdraw its troops from NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and 
Kosovo precipitously or without consultation with its NATO allies.

Bush campaign officials dismayed Europeans last year by saying Washington 
might withdraw the troops from the Balkans unilaterally and leave the job to 
Europeans.

Powell also said the United States supported the European Union's plans to 
create its own rapid reaction force to deal with crises that NATO does not 
want to handle.

He said the European Security and Defense Initiative would fit easily into 
the NATO framework and would enhance the capabilities of the alliance.

Analysts have speculated, however, that the initiative could be the beginning 
of the end for NATO as Europe and the United States, no longer united by the 
Cold War threat, drift apart.