NATO approves Macedonia force

NLA rebels will be expected to hand over their weapons to the NATO force

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- The North Atlantic Council has given the go-ahead for the deployment of a 3,500-strong NATO force to collect weapons in Macedonia.

Operation Essential Harvest will be led by Britain, with about 1,800 troops, plus another 1,700 drawn from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Turkey and the United States.

A NATO statement issued on Wednesday said: "At 12 o'clock today, the North Atlantic Council agreed to issue the execution directive authorising the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Joseph Ralston, to release the activation order for Operation 'Essential Harvest'."

NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said the decision to deploy the force came after four pre-conditions were met.

IN-DEPTH Macedonia: Hurdles to peace   •  Balkan hotspots   •  Interactive map   •  Macedonia's military   •  News search   •  Audio/video archive   •  In-Depth: Yugoslavia   •  In-Depth: Kosovo   AUDIO CNN's Walter Rodgers: A symbolic surrender of weapons 1220K / 155 sec. WAV sound NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson: "Decision is not the end of the road." 832K / 77 secs WAV sound   Operation Essential Harvest - A 30-day NATO plan to set up 15 arms collection points in western and northern Macedonia. - The number of weapons held by the rebel National Liberation Army varies from anything between 2,500 guns to 8,000. - The UK will provide the biggest component of the 3,500-strong force. - A 400-strong advance guard, drawn mainly from the British 16th Air Assault Brigade, is already in Macedonia. - Eleven other countries, including France, Germany and the Czech Republic, are expected to be involved.

Those, he said, were a political agreement signed by the main parliamentary leaders, an agreement with Macedonia over the conditions for the task force, an "explicit agreement" by the ethnic Albanian groups to disarm and, finally, an "enduring" ceasefire.

He added: "The decision made today (by NATO) is the right one, but it has also been a difficult one and there are risks involved.

"We recognise that members of the alliance have, nevertheless, agreed to send their troops because they know that the risk of not sending them are far greater.

"There will be trying times ahead. Some extremists and hardliners will, of course, try to derail this agreement."

The 30-day operation will be carried out in three phases -- deployment, collection and withdrawal.

The first phase is the deployment. NATO has identified several locations where units will be situated, with headquarters near Skopje.

One battalion will be northwest of Skopje and others will be at Petrovec Airport, Kumanovo and Krivolak.

The second phase, weapons collection, will begin as soon as the collection sites are established.

Locations will probably change frequently and most of the weapons will be transported to a central point before being taken to Greece and destroyed.

NATO officials said the exact number of weapons to be collected still has not been agreed.

They stress that the collection is part of the process of building confidence in the political agreement and that the two must go hand-in-hand.

The third phase of the operation is the withdrawal of all forces. The alliance says it has no plan to extend the mission.

Up to 700 men from the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment will fly out to join a 400-strong advance party "as soon as possible", a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman in London said.

Under a peace agreement signed by the rebels and the Macedonian government, as well as the majority Slav and minority Albanian political parties in Macedonia, NATO forces will conduct a limited mission to collect rebels arms.

The rebels have said they were fighting to win equal rights for Macedonia's Albanian minority, which comprises about 22 percent of the country's two million people.

An advance group of about 400 British soldiers is already in Macedonia checking on the ground whether the cease-fire will hold -- one of four conditions set by NATO before sending troops in.