Hotel bomb and arms dispute cast doubt over Nato Macedonia mission

The deaths of two men in a hotel bombing and a dispute between the Macedonian government and Nato cast doubt yesterday over the allied mission to collect arms from Albanian rebels, which was due to start today.

Hundreds of British Nato troops are still arriving in Macedonia for the arms operation in a last-ditch effort to prevent civil war.

The remains of Svetislav Trpkovski and Boge Ilijvski, the first men killed since Nato troops arrived, were being dragged out of the rubble yesterday, even as Nato and the Macedonian government argued over the number of weapons Nato will collect.

At a press conference that was repeatedly postponed as the wrangling continued behind the scenes, Nato's commander in Macedonia, the Danish General Gunnar Lange, announced that troops would collect 3,300 arms, including 2,950 assault rifles and two captured tanks.

But the Macedonian government has not agreed to the figure, which the Prime Minister, Ljubco Georgievski, denounced as laughable. "To talk about only 3,000 pieces of weaponry after five or six months of crisis is ridiculous. I believe that the experts from Nato will correct that number," he told reporters. "Without serious disarmament further fighting is guaranteed."

With that figure, the war would start again as soon as Nato troops left ­ which they are scheduled to do in just 30 days ­ he predicted. If the Macedonian government continues to reject Nato's target, the entire operation may be rendered ineffective.

In a sign of increasing tensions in the capital, police reported a suspected bomb blast in a garbage container in the Sever neighbourhood of Skopje, Macedonia's capital, last night. No casualties were initially reported.

But the Brioni Motel, in the village of Celopek, was a shattered concrete shell after a devastating explosion earlierin the day.

The roof lay caved in over a pile of rubble. The bodies of Mr Trpkovski and Mr Ilijvski, both hotel employees, were found after their feet were seen protruding from the wreckage. Mr Ilijvski was a father of two teenage children.

Macedonian police sources told state television that the wiring of an explosive device had been found tied round the bodies, indicating that the attack was deliberate. Other reports from officials said the hotel had been mined.

Crowds of angry Macedonians surrounded the site yesterday, and some Western journalists had to leave after they were threatened.

The timing of the killings, on the eve of Nato's first weapons collections, was deliberate.

It was the latest in a series of violent incidents that have coincided with important developments in the peace process.

The explosions came days after a Macedonian church was destroyed at the time Nato's most senior general in Europe visited last week.

Ten Macedonian soldiers were ambushed and killed the day a peace deal was agreed. The day before it was signed, several Albanian civilians were killed by police. Rebels are clearly trying to derail the peace process.

The government's objection to Nato's figure for weapons collections appears to be intended to do the same. Mr Georgievski claims that the rebels have at least 60,000 weapons ­ and that Nato's figure does not represent a complete disarmament.

But the weapons handovers were always intended to be a gesture, not a complete disarmament, as Nato officials privately concede.

Nobody expects the rebels to hand over everything and risk the Macedonian side reneging on the peace deal and launching an outright attack on them.

New weapons shipments were already on their way to the rebels from Kosovo, Nato intelligence officials said.

Macedonian police yesterday blamed the Albanian rebel group, the National Liberation Army, for the hotel bombing that killed Mr Trpkovski and Mr Ilijvski.

It was a second more hardline rebel group, the Albanian National Army, which claimed reponsibility for the earlier ambush and the killing of 10 soldiers. The Macedonian police have themselves been involved in earlier incidents.