SKOPJE, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -NATO persuaded ethnic Albanian fighters in Macedonia to lay down their guns Tuesday, paving the way for the alliance to send a British-led force to oversee the disarmament plan.
The news was welcomed as a boost to the fragile peace process after a day when Monday's breakthrough accord on constitutional reform was overshadowed by sporadic fighting and claims of a police massacre of civilians. (Read photo caption below)
NATO envoy Pieter Feith met with leaders of the self-styled National Liberation Army (NLA) and secured a commitment to disarm, Feith's spokesman Paul Barnard told AFP, hailing the deal as a "significant step forward".
The North Atlantic Council, NATO's ruling body, will meet on Wednesday and is almost certain to approve the deployment of a 3,500-strong force to set up collection centres on rebel-held territory.
The first troops, expected to be paratroopers from Britain's 16th Air Assault Brigade, could arrive "within days" or even sooner, officials said.
A source in the office of Macedonia's President Boris Trajkovski gave the deal an extremely cautious welcome, saying: "It's obvious that it's a very important element for the whole process."
"But bearing in mind that NATO will only be collecting the weapons on a voluntary basis and the numerous violations of the ceasefire we have justified fears and doubts about the success of this process," he added.
In a sign of the dangers that could still await the NATO force, troops from the alliance's Kosovo peacekeeping force exchanged fire Tuesday with Albanian fighters after they arrested 16 more fighters trying to cross the Macedonian border.
No-one was hurt in the incident, which will stoke fears that some Albanians may not be ready to back down from the six-month campaign which has left them in control of a large swathe of northern Macedonia.
Earlier Macedonian army sources told AFP that their troops had fought sporadic battles with Albanians inside the country earlier in the day.
But Western officials said the fighting was low-key and did not affect plans to deploy the intervention force.
"We expect parliament to discuss approving the accord on Wednesday and that the troops will deploy soon after that," a European diplomat told AFP.
But while the frontline was relatively quiet, allegations that Macedonian police shot dead five unarmed ethnic Albanian villagers at the weekend, just hours ahead of the peace deal, have raised tensions.
The interior ministry angrily insisted the five, who Western reporters and OSCE observers saw lying dead in and around the village of Ljuboten, were terrorists.
International observers, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP that at least two of the men appeared to have been shot from behind at close range.
Villagers in Ljuboten, 10 kilometres (six miles) north of Skopje, refused to allow a Macedonian investigating prosecutor to visit the scene of the killings, and said that the men had been shot in cold blood.
The speaker of the Macedonian parliament, Stojan Andov, told reporters the first session to discuss the implementation of the peace accord, which foresees constitutional changes, would not begin until NATO could guarantee that a third of the weapons had been collected.
Final ratification would only be discussed after all the weapons had been handed in, he added.
Leaders of the main group of ethnic Albanian fighters, the National Liberation Army (NLA), who have been fighting for minority rights, have signalled their support for the peace accord.
But on Tuesday a second, little known, Albanian group, the Albanian National Army (ANA), issued a communique vowing to fight on in the goal of splitting Macedonia in two and creating a Greater Albanian homeland.
Albanian observers in Skopje believe the hardline group has a handful of units fighting alongside the mainstream NLA but it is not clear how much influence it wields.
A well-placed European diplomat said that the group represented only a small handful of radical intellectuals, and was not thought to have enough military strength to endanger the peace process.
In Monday's accord, the leaders of Macedonia's four main parties -- two Macedonian and two ethnic Albanian -- agreed to ratify the deal in parliament within 45 days, hold a census within two months to update population figures, recruit 500 more ethnic Albanians to the police and recognise Albanian as an official language in areas with large Albanian populations.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Ethnic Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi, Macedonian Premier Ljubco Georgijevski and Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, from left, sign a peace agreement in Skopje, Macedonia, Monday Aug. 13 2001. The landmark peace accord aims at ending six months of bloody conflict and clearing the way for NATO troops to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels. (AP Photo/ MIA, Vlatko Perkovski, Pool)
- Aug 13 7:35 PM ET