NATO debates Macedonia troops plan

NATO spokesman Barry Johnson said hostilities must stop before NATO will start disarming rebels

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- NATO leaders are meeting to decide whether to send in troops to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels after political leaders in Macedonia signed a peace deal.

The North Atlantic Council, NATO's ruling body, is meeting on Wednesday after rebels pledged on Tuesday in Skopje to hand in their weapons to a British-led force of 3,500 troops that may be deployed before the end of the week.

Officials from the military alliance told Reuters the decision to hold the meeting a day earlier than expected and on a bank holiday in Belgium, Assumption Day, reflects NATO's desire to consult member countries fully. A decision to send troops could then be taken as soon as the conditions were right.

NATO set various conditions for deploying its forces to collect the arms of ethnic Albanian rebels. These included a lasting cease-fire and an agreement by the rebels to disarm.

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About 15 NATO military experts flew to Skopje on Tuesday to review the truce and try to find ways of making it hold.

In Brussels, NATO officials also said rebels officially declared how many weapons they intend to turn in. They were working with the Macedonian government to get them to accept that figure, estimated at 2,000 weapons.

The news was welcomed as a boost to the fragile peace process after a day when Monday's breakthrough accord on constitutional reform was overshadowed by sporadic fighting and claims of a police massacre of civilians.

The commitment signed by the rebels to lay down their arms is pending a grant of amnesty from the government.

A NATO spokesman said discussions were continuing with the government over an amnesty, with some issues still outstanding. But an announcement could come as soon as Wednesday, the spokesman said.

A rebel commander told CNN that under the disarmament commitment, rebels would give up their arms in three stages over a 30-day period, with a verification process to satisfy the security concerns of both sides.

The disarmament agreement came a day after leaders of the four main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties signed a peace deal to end the six-month conflict by improving the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about a third of the country's population of two million.

The Macedonian parliament, dominated by nationalists, must ratify the accord for it to take effect. A vote is to be held within 45 days.

Earlier on Tuesday, fighting was continuing between Macedonia's army and ethnic Albanian rebels but NATO sources said conditions were almost right to deploy troops to collect arms.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Kosovo on Tuesday, NATO peacekeepers came under fire when they detained 16 suspected members of a Macedonian ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.

In Macedonia, the OSCE said a number of bodies have been found in a village outside the capital Skopje that was hit in heavy weekend fighting.

Asked about unconfirmed reports of executions of ethnic Albanians in the village, a spokesman for the OSCE mission in Macedonia, Harald Schenker, told Reuters: "We can confirm that a number of bodies have been found in Ljuboten today."

Reuters reported that the bodies of five ethnic Albanian men, one of them elderly, had been found. They had apparently been shot at close range.

Macedonian army soldiers patrol a village northeast of Skopje

Macedonia said its security forces had killed five ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the village accused the OSCE of wrongly describing the dead as civilians.

The deaths on Friday of eight Macedonian soldiers in a landmine explosion on a mountain road outside the village sparked retaliation by government forces who bombarded suspected rebel positions nearby on Sunday.

Officials from the military alliance told Reuters a final decision by ambassadors from the 19 NATO member states on whether to deploy the troops was unlikely on Wednesday. But a decision could be reached by the end of this week.