NATO's top commander met alliance experts and Macedonian security chiefs in Skopje today to judge whether a ceasefire with guerrillas had improved enough to launch NATO's third Balkans mission since 1995.
Overnight skirmishing between rebels and security forces 40 km (25 miles) west of Skopje underlined the truce's fragility but confrontation zones have calmed markedly in the past week and diplomats said the latest outburst should not daunt NATO.
Supreme commander General Joseph Ralston did not tip his hand, mindful of internal NATO dissent over the viability of a plan to have alliance troops collect ethnic Albanian rebel arms.
He hopes to forge consensus when he briefs NATO ambassadors back in Brussels tomorrow.
"I'm here on a fact-finding mission...I am gathering facts and I will go back and put them in my report and make that report to the North Atlantic Council (NAC)", the US general said. The council groups NATO's 19 policy-making ambassadors.
"Then it will be up to the nations of NATO what to do from here", he told reporters in a statement, briefly breaking a wall of secrecy around his whirlwind visit.
As General Ralston arrived, teams from the advance contingent of NATO's Operation Essential Harvest fanned out through confrontation zones to gauge security conditions, brief combatants on disarmament and listen to concerns on both sides.
If General Ralston advises the NAC that the ceasefire is reliable, they are expected to authorise a 3,500-strong force to gather up weaponry voluntarily yielded by the Albanians' National Liberation Army under an accord on constitutional reform.