Rebel chief marks conflict's end

NATO troops are on a 30-day mission to collect rebel arms

SIPKOVICA, Macedonia -- The leader of the ethnic Albanian rebels says the armed struggle in Macedonia is finished.

As NATO troops began the third day of the operation to collect weapons from his National Liberation Army, guerrilla leader Ali Ahmeti said the new task is to make sure the peace process holds.

Ahmeti said the Macedonian government and the country's ethnic Albanian minority must "continue to live together."

Ahmeti, who rules his forces from the tiny mountain village of Sipkovica, has agreed to let his forces hand over its weapons to NATO troops in a mission set to last 30 days.

NATO began Operation Essential Harves on Monday during which several hundred weapons, mines, mortars and thousands of rounds of ammunition were surrendered.

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But the operation is not without controversy.

Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski has said the rebels retain 60,000 weapons, a claim dismissed by Ahmeti.

"I think this is all a political campaign," said Ahmeti. "Their greatest fear is that they will lose position."

According to the disarmament plan, Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels are supposed to withdraw from positions where they are in close contact.

But in Macedonia's second-largest city, Tetovo, about 200 angry Macedonians blockaded a road used by the military on Tuesday in an attempt to prevent the army from withdrawing heavy weaponry from its positions.

Many Macedonians fear that without the army's protection, they could be attacked by the rebels.

"We made this barricade to prevent soldiers from pulling out," said Snezana Krstevska, 56, a Macedonian from Tetovo.

"We will never leave and they can pass only over our dead bodies."

Many Macedonians also blame NATO for the situation in their country, saying the alliance failed to stop the smuggling of weapons into Macedonia from Kosovo, believed to be a major supply route for the rebels.

The start of the military alliance's operation was overshadowed by the death of a British member of the NATO force.

But NATO said the death of Ian Collins, a sapper with the 9 Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, would not delay or derail the process.

Youths are being blamed for throwing the lump of concrete that killed the 22-year-old serviceman as he drove toward the capital Skopje on Sunday night.

On Wednesday NATO Secretary-General George Robertson will travel to Macedonia to get an overview of the operation, followed by a similar visit on Thursday by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"Lord Robertson has come down here many times at many phases of this process and has a personal interest in seeing peace come back to Macedonia," said NATO spokesman Major Barry Johnson.

Straw has defended the decision to send UK troops into Macedonia after describing Collins' death as "untimely and completely unnecessary."

British soldier Ian Collins was killed on Sunday

But he said Britain's participation in the NATO operation was justified in order to prevent another bloody conflict in the Balkans.

Straw said: "I understand the questions that have been raised about our participation in this peacekeeping force in Macedonia.

"I want to say this about it: the lesson of the last 10 years is that the longer conflict is left in the Balkans, the more difficult and bloody it becomes and the more serious the consequences then follow for the people of the Balkans but also for everybody across Europe.

"That the lesson that we learnt from Croatia and Bosnia at the beginning of the 1990s, it was a lesson that was put in practice by our Prime Minister who led the effort to secure peace in Kosovo two years ago.

"And it is the thinking which lies behind this operation Essential Harvest in Macedonia today."