A deal has been struck to end the six-month insurgency in the tiny, impoverished country of Macedonia. Now everything depends on whether a genuine peace can be established. Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders signed an agreement, which embodies the essence of the demands of the guerrilla Albanian forces. NATO and the European Union carefully nurtured the peace process and applied pressure to prevent the conflict initiated by the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) from exploding into a full-scale Balkan war.
This seems to have been accomplished for the moment, although the ceasefire has been violated repeatedly in the days following the signing of the agreement in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, early last week. These incidents, however, were neither unexpected nor large in scale. The conflict appeared to be sputtering to an end. In fact, everything now hinges on maintaining the ceasefire until the critical stage of disarming the NLA can begin.
A British-led force of 3,500 NATO troops is ready to begin the difficult and risky task of collecting weapons from the insurgents under the agreement. NATO aptly calls this duty "Operation Essential Harvest" because peace can come only through its success.