U.S.: 'A lot of work' needed to implement Macedonia peace plan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An agreement between the Macedonian government and the ethnic Albanian political parties is "an essential step" toward bringing peace to the country, but implementing the agreement will be tough, a senior State Department official said Monday.

The agreement was the product of a joint U.S.-European Union negotiating effort led by James Pardew, the U.S. special adviser on the Balkans, and the EU's Francois Leotard.

"We believe this agreement strengthens the Macedonian state," the official said. "A war would have led to the separation of the Macedonian state."

The framework agreement, signed last Monday, gives ethnic Albanians more rights under the country's constitution. Those rights include official usage of the Albanian language, increased ethnic Albanian representation in the predominantly Slavic Macedonian government and hiring of more Albanians for Macedonia's police force.

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The official insisted that at no time were the rebels in the National Liberation Army part of the political negotiations. He said that separate military negotiations securing a promise for the rebels to disarm, in exchange for amnesty by the Macedonian government, were facilitated by NATO.

U.S. Gen. Joseph Ralston, NATO's supreme commander for Europe, arrived in Macedonia on Monday to take part in an evaluation of security in the troubled region and decide if it is safe to deploy alliance troops to collect rebel weapons.

The official acknowledged it was unrealistic to assume the rebels would lay down all of their weapons -- "Nobody is going to collect all of the weapons in the Balkans," he said -- but he added that the rebels "made commitments to NATO" to disarm, which "we expect them to live up to."

At the invitation of Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, the Bush administration is preparing to commit millions of dollars to a public relations campaign aimed at convincing the Macedonian people, and ultimately the parliament, to support the deal, the senior official said.

"The leaders have not made a serious effort to prepare the public for an agreement," the official said. "There is a lot of work to be done."

The United States will contribute to an effort to train a new police force by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- an effort similar to training conducted for police in Kosovo after the 1999 NATO war with Yugoslavia. The agreement also recognizes the territorial integrity of Macedonia as a "unitary" state.

At least 80 votes from Macedonia's 120-seat parliament are needed for ratification of the constitutional changes called for in the agreement. In accordance with the terms, the parliament must pass the constitutional reforms within 45 days. An international donors conference to rebuild Macedonia, called for in the agreement, won't be scheduled until the constitutional changes are made, the official said.

The official acknowledged that the Macedonian parliament would be skeptical about passing constitutional changes before the Albanians began disarming, but that the rebels would also be hesitant to lay down their weapons before the constitutional changes were made.