Macedonia still tense as British pack bags

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Leading article: We are in Macedonia for the long haul

British troops were preparing to leave Macedonia yesterday after Nato announced it had completed its mission to collect arms from the Albanian rebels occupying several areas of the country.

But, while Nato's soldiers pack their bags, the peace process initiated by the West is far from complete and the danger of civil war lingers on.

The rebels are still occupying large tracts of land, making it impossible for thousands of refugees from the ethnic Macedonian majority to go home.

Meanwhile, in the areas around the refugees' homes, ethnic Macedonian paramilitary groups with ill-defined links to the government have begun to emerge, threatening to impose their own solution by force.

The Macedonian parliament is bitterly divided over whether to vote more rights for the Albanian minority into law, as agreed under the Western-brokered Ohrid peace deal, and is dragging its feet over coming to a final vote, which could go either way. The guerrillas have threatened to rearm if the Macedonian side does not keep its side of the deal.

There is no sign of a promised government amnesty for members of the rebels' National Liberation Army (NLA). Ljube Boskovksi, the ultra-hardline Interior Minister, has said he will order a new security crackdown on the rebels as soon as Nato leaves.

But Nato will not be pulling out altogether. The alliance has agreed to provide a much smaller follow-on force, ostensibly to protect international monitors who will observe the implementation of the peace deal. The real reason is more probably that the international community believes a symbolic Nato presence alone will do much to prevent further fighting.

Full details of the new force are yet to be confirmed, but it is likely to be small, with only about 1,000 troops – fewer than a quarter of the current force of some 4,500. That has uncomfortable echoes in the Balkans, where tiny UN forces proved powerless to stop the killing in Bosnia. It will be led by Germany, and is unlikely to include many British troops.

There were up to 1,900 British soldiers in Task Force Harvest, which is winding up. The only casualty was Sapper Ian Collins, who was killed when youths on a bridge threw a concrete block through the windscreen of his Land Rover.

Nato's secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, visited Macedonia this week. He said Task Force Harvest's success had "proved the sceptics wrong".

Ed Joseph, the International Crisis Group think-tank's representative in Macedonia, said yesterday: "By any objective you have to credit Nato with a success here. You have to look at it in the context of what was happening right before Nato came, on the weekend of 12-13 August." At that point, Macedonia was on the verge of civil war, with fighting on the outskirts of the capital and air force bombers raiding rebel-held villages.

"But that success doesn't mean the danger is past," Mr Joseph said. "For this peace process to work, it is absolutely critical that the Macedonian people see results from it fast, and that means the internally displaced people going home."

An official in the Macedonian President's office said yesterday that parliament was unlikely to pass reforms until the government regained some of the land occupied by the rebels. Under the Ohrid agreement, new Albanian rights are supposed to be voted into law by tomorrow. That deadline is unlikely to be met.

The package looks unlikely to be approved by the necessary two-thirds majority, and a proposal for a national referendum, yet to be voted on by parliament, could delay the process by months and in effect wreck the peace deal.