Balkans Alight, NATO’s Delight?
European Foundation Intelligence Digest
Issue No. 122 13th – 28th June 2001

The fruit salad explodes

As predicted in the Digest, it appears increasingly likely that a protectorate will be established in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Nato announced on 20^th June 2001 that it was preparing to send troops "to help disarm rebels". Initially, it insisted that the government and the rebels reach a negotiated settlement first, saying that it had no intention of intervening against the country’s will. Once government forces attacked the village of Aracinovo, however, the West abandoned this conciliatory tone. Chris Patten belligerently told the Macedonian foreign minister that aid would be withheld if the government did not do as it was told: Mr. Patten is evidently getting used to bossing Balkan governments around, his barely legal use of EU money to overthrow Slobodan Miloševic having merely been the prelude for further instructions issued to the governments under Vojislav Koštunica. In the same vein, one EU diplomat said, "We cannot tolerate a government breaking cease-fires," as if it was for the EU to tolerate or not tolerate what a sovereign government does. [Philippe Gélie, Le Figaro, 26^th June 2001, p. 4] It is in any case not clear what cease-fire is being referred since shooting has been going on uninterrupted between government forces and rebels for weeks.

From the very beginning of this crisis, the EU has taken the front seat in the Macedonian crisis – marching in lock-step with Nato, to be sure. The EU’s newly-created foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, has appointed the former discredited French defence minister, François Léotard, to be the EU’s permanent representative in Skopje with responsibility for negotiating with the government and the rebels. This imposition of Mr. Léotard and his mandate seems to have been decided without a prior request for mediation by the government of Skopje – no doubt confirmation that the EU considers sovereignty an outdated concept.

The anti-Western feeling which has been running high in Macedonia ever since the crisis started reached a high point on Monday night when it was revealed that some 80 US Kfor troops had bussed some 350 – 450 Albanian rebels out of Aracinovo without disarming them. (Their arms were handed over for the duration of the bus journey but then returned.) Naturally, this news infuriated ordinary Macedonians. An angry crowd of 15,000 gathered in front of the Macedonian parliament building, which also houses the presidency and the president’s residence, to protest. They demanded the resignation of the Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovski, and some of them managed to storm the building. Pictures of Javier Solana were burned and BBC cameramen were attacked. The media naturally swung into action against the Macedonians, with German papers referring to the demonstration as "a night of hatred." [Die Welt, 27^th June 2001]

Following those incidents, it came as no surprise when one of the leading Albanian politicians in Macedonia, Iljaz Halimi of the DPA, said on Tuesday that only "the quickest possible intervention by Nato" could yet prevent a civil war. Zakir Bekhteshi of the rival Albanian party (PDP) said that the attack on the parliament had weakened the institutions of the Macedonian state and that only a Nato intervention could restore order. Representatives the rebels threatened at the same time to march on the capital Skopje and on other towns. The EU immediately insisted it would take a front seat in the crisis. The Chairman of the EU council of foreign ministers, the Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh, said that the new EU representative, François Léotard, would travel to Skopje "very soon". Lindh said, "This is not just a Macedonian conflict, it also has very great international significance." "Our duties remain," she added, " and we will remain present even if we are not very popular at the moment." According to the UN, some 60,000 Albanian refugees have fled into Kosovo and some 6,000 into Southern Serbia to escape the fighting. The UNHCR asked for $17.5 million to look after 100,000 people. [Deutsche Presse Agentur, Handelsblatt, 26^th June 2001]

Will Macedonia be testing-ground for euro-army?

The high profile taken by Javier Solana and the appointment of François Léotard to be the EU’s permanent representative in Skopje emphasise how great a role the EU has wanted to play in Macedonia. Yet on Wednesday, reluctance was expressed in the German parliament to the idea that Germany would send troops into Macedonia. Opposition comes mainly from the Greens and the Christian Democrats but also from within the governing SPD. This followed a declaration by the German Chancellor that Germany would abide by its international obligations, i.e. that she would send troops if asked. British and France are, by contrast, sure to participate; the USA has said it will not. [Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, 27^th June 2001] It will be interesting, therefore, to see whether the intervention in Macedonia becomes the testing ground for the new European army – which has been created for interventions where Nato as a whole chooses not to act.

Albanian rebels ‘trained by USA’

According to a German newspaper, 17 US "instructors" were among the Albanian rebels in Aracinovo, while 70% of their arms were also American. The 17 instructors were former US army officers who were giving the rebels military training. A Pentagon spokesman said he would not confirm this information – a formula which, according to US journalists, is a confirmation. [Hamburger Abendblatt, 27^th June 2001]

This news follows the earlier revelation that during fighting around Aracinovo on Monday night, an American diplomat was slightly wounded by Macedonian gun fire as he "emerged from the woods with two other Americans", according to an American newspaper. [International Herald Tribune, 26^th June 2001, page 7]. The paper does not speculate what an American "diplomat" might have been doing in such a covert place as a wood full of rebels.

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