NATO ambassadors this evening put off a decision on whether to send thousands of troops to Macedonia, saying they needed more time to assess whether a ceasefire was holding in the war-torn former Yugoslav republic.
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British advanced guard arriving in Macedonia
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Instead the 19 envoys, meeting in Brussels as a British advance guard set off for Macedonia, agreed to dispatch General Joseph Ralston, the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, to Skopje on Monday to size up the situation.
"The meeting did not make any decision on deployment of NATO troops...because the delegations are still expecting to receive more information to assess the ceasefire on the ground," a NATO official said.
The official sounded a cautiously optimistic note about the atmosphere in Macedonia, where the government and the country's ethnic Albanian minority agreed on a package of reforms last Monday aimed at ending months of violence.
"Things are a lot calmer, especially since the signing of the agreement on Monday, said the official. It seems there has been no major breach of the ceasefire (agreed last weekend), though there has been some sporadic exchange of fire. Things are mostly holding," he said.
The official added that the NATO envoys had condemned yesterday's fatal shooting of a Macedonian policeman by suspected ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the town of Tetovo.
NATO officials had initially signalled that the envoys might decide as early today on whether to send the force, expected to total 3,500 troops and to stay in Macedonia for just 30 days.