[ALBSA-Info] Bulgaria urges international help for Macedonia

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Bulgaria urges international help for Macedonia

  
SOFIA, March 9 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's parliament called on Friday for broad 
international engagement to to end the occupation of areas along Macedonia's 
border with Kosovo by ethnic Albanian guerrillas. 

The guerrilla activity has stirred fears of a new Balkan conflict and the 
Bulgarian assembly condemned attempts by extremists to spread violence across 
the region. 

"(The Bulgarian parliament) appeals to the U.N., NATO, the Organisation for 
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union to keep up 
their vigorous efforts to prevent the destabilisation of Macedonia, and 
therefore of the whole region," the legislators said in a declaration. 

"(We) expect KFOR (the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force) to strengthen 
measures for control of the border between Kosovo and Macedonia, in order to 
curb provocations." 

Bulgaria, a neighbour of Macedonia and Serbia, pledged "hundreds of tonnes" 
of ammunition and other military supplies for Macedonian troops now fighting 
armed bands inside the country after KFOR pushed the gunmen from their base 
on the border with Kosovo. The first shipment went on Thursday. 

Macedonia fears the guerrillas will try to stir revolt among its ethnic 
Albanian minority -- one third of its population. Kosovo, a province of 
Serbia with an overwhelming Albanian majority, is under interim post-war U.N. 
administration. 

Aside from economic losses, Bulgaria has remained untouched by a decade of 
wars accompanying the break-up of Yugoslavia. But nearby clashes along 
Macedonia's nearby border with Kosovo have alarmed the Sofia leadership. 

On Sunday, Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov, in a telephone conversation 
with Macedonian counterpart Boris Trajkovski, offered Bulgarian troops as 
reinforcements. 

The offer was modified a day later in Brussels, where Stoyanov said Bulgaria 
would contribute troops to a possible border protection force under United 
Nations auspices. 

Sending Bulgarian troops to Macedonia would be sensitive, political analysts 
say, because of historical bitterness over occupation by pro-German Bulgarian 
forces during the first and second world wars. 

Macedonia has urged NATO to deploy troops along the border with Kosovo to 
prevent further infiltration by the gunmen. 

NATO said on Thursday it would let Yugoslav Serb security forces enter a 
buffer zone on Serbian territory abutting Kosovo and Macedonia to stop it 
being used as a guerrilla corridor.