NATO is prepared to send several thousand troops to Macedonia to oversee the disarmament of ethnic Albanian guerrillas if a political accord is reached between the government and the rebels, a NATO official said Wednesday.
The news came as NATO ambassadors mulled a request from Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski for help in disarming the guerrillas.
Meanwhile, talks in Skopje aimed at uniting the fractious multi-ethnic government behind a Western-backed peace plan showed no signs of a breakthrough.
NATO has insisted the Macedonian Slav and ethnic Albanian parties reach a political consensus on reforms and a plan for decommissioning rebel weapons before it intervenes.
In Paris, a security official told AFP that up to 3,000 troops could be sent into Macedonia within weeks to secure the border with Kosovo and disarm the ethnic Albanian rebels.
The peacekeepers would not be drawn from the 44,000-strong NATO-led force already in Kosovo but be "from outside the theatre" and be essentially drawn from European countries, the well-placed source said.
The deployment would begin in the first weeks of July and would be for a limited period of time, the official said, requesting anonymity.
"It will be for short period of time. We'll act soon," he said.
Troops would be deployed along the mountainous area of northern Macedonia stretching between the towns of Kumanovo and Tetovo which has been the scene of fighting between government forces and guerrillas since February, he said.
But the force would not be sent until an agreement was reached with the rebels for them to lay down their arms, the official warned.
"The force is not going there to fight," he said.
NATO ambassadors were meeting in Brussels to consider a Macedonian request for help in disarming ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) under the terms of a partial amnesty.
The Alliance has said it has no immediate plans to send troops into the fragile ethnically-divided republic, and Washington has signalled that it is unwilling to allow US troops to be deployed there.
But press reports in Italy, Britain and Spain have said that European powers are preparing a large peacekeeping force to go into Macedonia with the agreement of both sides in the conflict -- BRUSSELS (AFP)
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