Violence at Macedonia embassies
has had no impact on Camp Able Sentry
By Gregory Piatt,
Kosovo bureau
The violence that touched the U.S., British and German embassies in Skopje, Macedonia,
on Wednesday had no impact on the U.S. camp there, a KFOR spokesman said.
Camp Able Sentry, which serves as a logistic and staging base for KFOR, houses about
600 military personnel.
"I haven’t heard of any protests at Camp Able Sentry," said Maj. Randy
Martin, the spokesman for U.S. troops serving in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission.
A mob of several hundred anti-Western protesters erupted in fierce street protests
Tuesday, throwing stones and breaking windows at the embassies. The doors of the German
and British embassies were broken, as was the front window of a McDonald’s
restaurant.
Vandals burned several cars belonging to the United Nations and the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe before the violent protests subsided early Wednesday.
One U.S. KFOR officer said on the condition of anonymity that Camp Able Sentry, which
is adjacent to Skopje airport on the outskirts of the capital, was put on a heighten state
of alert because of the protests.
But Martin, who is based at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, declined to talk about the state
of the security alert at any KFOR bases.
"I’d never talk about a higher state of alert," Martin said.
The protests caused Macedonia officials to close the border with Kosovo on Tuesday,
stopping KFOR troops and supplies coming from or going to Macedonia. But the border was
reopened last night, Martin said.
Tuesday’s protests came as ethnic Albanian rebels fought with Macedonia forces in
Tetovo, 25 miles west of Skopje. The Defense Ministry said that the rebels were advancing
around Tetovo, Macedonia’s second largest city, and had surrounded four nearby
villages.
Macedonian officials have threatened to ignore Western mediation efforts for a peace
deal and launch a new military offensive if rebels don’t pull back from positions
gained during two days of fierce fighting this week that broke a 3-week-old West-brokered
cease-fire.
During the cease-fire, Western diplomats’ efforts to prevent a civil war were
thwarted when the Macedonians rejected a proposal last week to make Albanian a second
official language and have police under local control.
On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson called the situation in
Macedonia "critical" and said he was flying to Skopje on Thursday with other top
European officials to try to get the negotiations back on track.
"The country faces grave decisions, and I call on all of those involved to
demonstrate leadership by taking the right decision to follow the path to peace and not to
war," Robertson said at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday.
The guerrillas launched their rebellion in February, saying they wanted greater rights
for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. The government says they are trying to carve up the
country into two ethnic federations policed by a NATO force.
But NATO doesn’t want another peacekeeping force in the Balkans, and its KFOR
troops have been trying to stop the flow of weapons coming from Kosovo and supplying
rebels in Macedonia.
The United States and other NATO countries repeatedly have pledged support to the
Macedonian government and backed it by refusing to negotiate directly with the insurgents.
Meanwhile, the Macedonian authorities have accused NATO and the West of siding with
rebels. Some Macedonian government officials have even said NATO is supplying and training
the rebels.
Government spokesman Antonio Milososki on Tuesday called NATO "a big friend of our
enemies."
NATO officials flatly denied providing assistance to the rebels.
At the demonstrations in Skopje, about 3,000 angry Macedonians protested in front of
the parliament under a banner that read, "Who is protecting the terrorists —
NATO."
Milososki accused NATO and the West of failing to respond to the rebels’
"cleansing" of Macedonian Slavs from villages around Tetovo and being biased in
the Western-backed peace negotiations.
"All our fears have proven true, that the international representatives are in
close coordination with the KLA," Milososki said about the defunct ethnic Albanian
Kosovo Liberation Army that the Macedonians say its former members are fighting with and
supporting the rebels.
"This is open, public cooperation between international mediators and the
rebels."
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