NATO will decide tomorrow whether to send 3,500 troops to Macedonia as part of a peace accord for the war-ravaged former Yugoslav republic, an alliance official said today.
The official said the 19 NATO ambassadors needed to communicate with their capitals after hearing a report on Macedonia from US General Joseph Ralston, the alliance's top commander, who visited the country yesterday.
This meeting today was essentially to listen to what (Ralston) had to say after his visit on Monday to Skopje, the official said.
The delegations now have all the information they need to take a decision, he added.
Another NATO source told Reutersthe NATO member states had until noon (11 a.m. Irish time) tomorrow to register any objections to the so-called Operation Essential Harvest, which would be NATO's third Balkan mission in a decade.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson would then be expected to announce that the operation, which is planned to last just 30 days, would go ahead.
The NATO official dismissed suggestions that the time needed for a decision pointed to divisions within the alliance. "This is a very important point. The fact we don't have a decision does not reflect any divergence of views", he said.
Under the peace plan, NATO would deploy 3,500 troops to collect arms from ethnic Albanian rebels while the Macedonian parliament passes laws designed to improve the status of the country's large ethnic Albanian minority.
Earlier today, NATO's military committee, which comprises representatives of the chiefs of staff of the 19 NATO member countries, gave its blessing to the deployment plan.
Western diplomats fear that any big delay in sending the NATO force would create a vacuum which extremists from the two camps would be able to exploit, raising the spectre of a wider Balkan conflict.
A 400-strong advance guard of mostly British troops is already in Macedonia to prepare the ground for the main force.