Pentagon defends U.S. evacuation mission in Macedonia

The Pentagon on Tuesday defended the participation of U.S. troops in an evacuation operation involving ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia, but said it should not be viewed as a major policy shift.

NATO forces escorted about 100 rebels along with 250 other civilians out of the Skopje suburb of Aracinovo on Monday.

"It was a new event," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said at a regular briefing. "We've not done this before. But what I'm reluctant to predict is this being a harbinger of some major new policy decision and a new area of continued activity on the part of U.S. forces. I do not think that is the case.

"But sometimes you're confronted with a particular set of tactical details and you take all the elements into account as best you can and you make your decision. And in this case, we think that that was a positive decision, one that contributed to the purpose of carrying out the mission in the first place, and that was to defuse the situation in Aracinovo."

The operation sparked demonstrations in Skopje Monday night as about 5,000 demonstrators stormed the parliament building. President Boris Trajkovski was among those who fled the building as the protest grew.

Protesters were upset by what they said was Trajkovski's bowing to international pressure by allowing rebels to take their weapons with them as they pulled back from the town.

"Clearly, you have seen those individuals and organizations that do not support the action taken," Quigley said in defense of the evacuation. "But we think it was the right one and anything that can be done to diffuse that situation and bring about a political solution to the difficulties in that part of the world is a step in the right direction."

Quigley said a convoy of about 20 buses were used to transport the ethnic Albanian rebels and citizens of the town to the village of Nikustak, about two kilometers away.

The buses were provided by France, Italy and the United States, the nations taking part in KFOR -- the NATO-led international force responsible for establishing a security presence in neighboring Kosovo.

He said the convoy involved "a total of about 101 U.S. people, that would be 81 military people and about 20 contractors that were actually driving the buses. " He said the buses entered the village, "with the full knowledge and consent of all the parties concerned.

Diplomats with the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe negotiated Monday's rebel pullback from Aracinovo. It came a day after shelling there destroyed a brief truce in the village brokered by EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

The ethnic Albanians say they are fighting for more rights from Macedonia's government. The government accuses the rebels -- who make up a third of Macedonia's 2 million people -- of trying to split ethnic Albanian-populated areas from the rest of the country.