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Monday, 27 August, 2001, 15:12 GMT 16:12 UK Nato 'satisfied' with weapons haul Nato forces moved in by air to the first collection site Hundreds of weapons have been collected from ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia, as Nato's weapons collection task force set to work. But the day was overshadowed by the death of a British soldier, killed near the capital, Skopje, after youths threw a lump of concrete at his vehicle. The incident happened on Sunday evening as the soldier - Sapper Ian Collins of the 9th Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers - drove the military vehicle along the main ...

Friday August 24, 11:34 PM NATO, Albanian rebels agree on number of weapons to collect SKOPJE, Aug 24 (AFP) - NATO on Friday set at just over 3,000 the number of weapons its troops will collect from ethnic Albanian rebels over the next month under a peace accord in Macedonia, Western military sources said. NATO officials were due to meet Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski and other government representatives at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) Friday to inform them of the figure, which is well below earlier Macedonian estimates of the rebels' arsenal. With NATO troops due to begin collecting the weapons ...

Wednesday August 22, 7:40 PM Country breakdown of NATO force to be sent into Macedonia BRUSSELS, Aug 22 (AFP) - NATO's "Essential Harvest" operation launched Wednesday to collect weapons from Macedonia's ethnic Albanian rebels will involve up to 3,500 troops from at least 12 countries. Some of the contingents will be sent from their home countries, while the remainder will come from the NATO-led peacekeeping forces already in the Balkans, particularly the KFOR force in Kosovo. BRITAIN will be the biggest contributor to the Macedonia operation. Four hundred British paratroopers are already in Macedonia, setting up headquarters in Skopje and ...

New Serbia May Have to Hurry Slowly Anna Husarska Thursday, August 16, 2001 BELGRADE Viewed from outside, Serbia is not changing fast enough. Thus the impatience of diplomats: How can this government still shelter indicted war criminals, how can it keep political prisoners in jail? Thus, too, the impatience of foreigners like me, who ask friends here: How can you live in a country where ethnic and sexual minorities are persecuted, where political killings and disappearances go unresolved? Still, given the brainwashing that Slobodan Milosevic applied to his subjects, a swift change imposed on Serbs, who for a decade ...

Tuesday August 21, 12:08 AM Milosevic turns 60 behind bars THE HAGUE, Aug 20 (AFP) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic celebrated his 60th birthday behind bars Monday, with his wife, daughter-in-law and grandson keeping him company as he awaited trial for war crimes at the UN tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic observed a sober birthday and had nobody, besides his immediate family, visit him from a nation that he had fought so hard to rule. His family was even barred from bringing him a birthday cake because jail overseers refused to allow food to be brought in, Dragoslav Ognjanovic, ...

August 17, 2001 A Month in Macedonia Will Not Be Enough By WESLEY K. CLARK he North Atlantic Treaty Organization expects to send some 3,500 troops to Macedonia in the next few weeks to collect rebel weapons. This decision, which is scheduled to be made today, is meant to signal that NATO is serious about its commitment to the region. But sending these troops with such a restricted mandate belies NATO's commitment. A mission so limited in scope and time risks failure in the decade-long effort to bring peace, stability and multi-ethnic democracy to the Balkans. If we have learned ...

Saturday, 18 August, 2001, 02:00 GMT 03:00 UK Analysis: Kostunica and Djindjic's struggle The BBC's correspondent in Belgrade, Nick Thorpe, looks at the background to the latest crisis in the Serbian government. The confrontation between President Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia and Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic's Democratic Party is about policies, personalities and profit. Mr Kostunica is undoubtedly more popular and appeals across the political spectrum to nationalists and even ex-supporters of former President Slobodan Milosevic. Mr Djindjic appears a more pro-Western and also more pragmatic political player. He is credited with engineering the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to the ...

U.S. Media blitz set for Macedonia Peter Finn Washington Post Service Friday, August 17, 2001 Advertising Campaign Aims to Promote Peace Agreement SKOPJE, Macedonia The U.S. government is planning to finance an intense political advertising and lobbying campaign here in the next 45 days to secure parliamentary passage of a peace deal that expands the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority, but is regarded with deep skepticism by Macedonian political parties and the Macedonian public, according to sources here and in Washington. The United States could spend up to $250,000, a significant amount of money for a media campaign ...

Pravda.RU:Main:More in detail 17:56 2001-08-14 IN TUMEN REGION A GIRL CHANGED HER SURNAME TO CLINTON A young citizen of Zavodoukovsk town has changed her undistinguished Russian surname to Clinton. This information was confirmed by the region civilian registry office. In was also reported, that the girl had changed her first name to an English one as well. This newly-baked Ms Clinton is supposed to emigrate to Great Britain, ‘Tyumenskaya Linia’ information agency reports. In Russia there are['nt] any juridical limits for first names and surnames of citizens. You could take any surname you like, the specialists on civil status field ...

Published on Wednesday, August 15, 2001 in the Guardian of London NATO Gave Us This Ethnic Cleansing The Macedonian war is a fight about borders, not human rights by Milcho Manchevski in Skopje The good guys of yesteryear have become the bad guys in Macedonia. Reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, US state department and UN last week all point to the Albanian separatists fighting here as perpetrators of ethnic cleansing directed at the Macedonian population. This comes as no surprise to Balkan-watchers who have been following the evolving tragedy in the country. During the ...

Monday August 13, 10:27 PM KFOR detains 27 for arms trafficking to Macedonia PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug 13 (AFP) - NATO troops in Kosovo have detained 27 people over the past week who were trying to smuggle arms from Albania to ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia, the commander of the Kosovo forcesaid Monday. A "significant volume" of weapons and materiel were confiscated during the arrests, said General Thorstein Skiaker in a statement. KFOR also pledged to continue to crack down on arms-smuggling as Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders were set to sign a peace accord in Skopje ending the guerrilla insurgency. ...

Saturday, Aug. 11, 2001 Macedonia Accuses Kosovo Albanians of Attacks SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia accused ethnic Albanian guerrillas from neighboring Kosovo of mounting attacks on Saturday even as the government and a local guerrilla leader expressed support for a plan meant to avert a new Balkan war. Macedonians held a day of mourning on Saturday for eight soldiers killed in land mine blasts blamed by the government on the guerrillas. The toll rose to eight after one of the nine injured in Friday's explosions died overnight. Fighting raged for a second day around the northern village of Radusa, where five ...

Friday, Aug. 10, 2001 Macedonia Suggests NATO Action Against Rebels SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia's foreign minister has suggested tougher international action to help end an uprising by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, saying the rebels will never agree to a plan to hand arms to NATO troops. Macedonia's government declared Saturday a day of national mourning after seven Macedonian soldiers were killed in a land mine attack blamed on the guerrillas as surging violence pushed the Balkan nation closer to full-blown war. Ten soldiers died in a rebel ambush Wednesday, the bloodiest attack of the six-month rebellion. And five rebels were ...

Friday August 10, 1:46 AM War crimes suspect a hero for Muslims in his village MALINE, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aug 9 (AFP) - For Muslims in the remote Bosnian village of Maline, Bosnian general Mehmed Alagic, who appeared Thursday before the UN Tribunal pleading not guilty to war crimes against Croats in this area, is a hero of 1992-95 war. "If there hadn't been for Alagic, we would have been all dead," said Muslim Irfan Zlatic, who lives in this central Bosnian tiny village, divided into Croat and Muslim parts. Generals Alagic and Enver Hadzihasanovic as well as former colonel Amir Kubura ...

Wednesday August 8, 2:59 AM NATO says no amnesty for Macedonian rebels guilty of war crimes OHRID, Macedonia, Aug 7 (AFP) - NATO on Tuesday laid down its terms for disarming ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia, stressing that rebels wanted for war crimes by the UN war crimes tribunal should not receive an amnesty. Peter Feith, NATO's top envoy in the Balkans, showed Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski a copy of a draft declaration that rebels will be expected to sign before NATO sweeps in to disarm them in the former Yugoslav republic. The declaration commits the rebels of the National ...

Whose NATO? By House Editorial If the ethnic Albanians had their way, NATO would be a tool to create their Greater Albania, an ethnically pure homeland which would expand Albania to parts of Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo. The United States would lead the alliance in the Balkans and remain in the role of big brother, getting them out of scrapes when they become involved in excessive paramilitary violence. Macedonians and the Serbs waver between protesting the U.S. presence and pleading with them to disarm the ethnic Albanians. Europeans have considered it more convenient for the United States to continue to ...

Saturday August 4, 10:47 PM After Serbs and Croats, UN court targets Bosnian Muslims THE HAGUE, Aug 4 (AFP) - With the arrest Thursday of three senior Bosnian Muslim officers, the UN war crimes tribunal has shown it intends to bring to justice all suspected war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, regardless of race or religion. In the last few days, all three main parties in the Balkan wars -- Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- have found themselves in the UN tribunal's sights. In July, the tribunal issued indictments against Croatian generals Rahim Ademi and Ante Gotovina for their role ...

Trapped in Macedonia Carlotta Gall New York Times Service Tuesday, July 31, 2001 Poverty and a Decade of Balkan Conflicts Feed a Network of Sex Slavery VELESTA, Macedonia This village, tucked down in the southwestern corner of the country near the border with Albania, is one of the strangest places in this part of the Balkans. It has the high-walled brick homes and rutted lanes typical of villages here, but amid the hay barns there are more than a dozen neon-lit nightclubs and sex bars with names like Madonna and Paradiso. Beneath the strange combination of rural quiet and ...

US presses for rapid political settlement in Macedonia WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday cranked up the pressure to secure a speedy political settlement in Macedonia while denying charges it was tilting toward the ethnic Albanian camp. "We do think that now is the time to reach a deal," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing here, referring to ongoing talks in Ohrid, southern Macedonia bringing together the country's main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties and international mediators. He made the comments before the announcement late Wednesday of a breakthrough on the key issue of ...

Macedonian Parties Make Breakthrough on Language Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2001 OHRID, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonia's political parties trying to end a five-month insurgency by ethnic Albanian rebels have made a breakthrough on the key question of use of the Albanian language. "We have obtained today an agreement from the four political parties on the question of language," European Union peace envoy Francois Leotard told reporters after talks between Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders in southern Macedonia. "But this accord...hinges on the outcome of the political discussions, notably on the issue of the police," he added. Details of the ...