*EPF206 06/26/01
Defense Department Report, June 26: Macedonia, Persian Gulf Security
(U.S. troops act to defuse tension in Macedonia) (700)
With the concurrence of the Macedonian government (FYROM) and Albanian rebels, U.S. forces helped to put together a convoy of approximately 20 vehicles to ferry 350 people -- 100 National Liberation Army (NLA) Albanian rebel fighters, and 250 civilians, including men, women and children -- out of Aracinovo, a suburb of the Macedonian capital of Skopje, where a dangerous situation had been "rapidly building," to a safer town 11 miles away. The rebels were permitted to bring their weapons, unloaded, with them, a Defense Department spokesman said.
Speaking at the Pentagon briefing June 26, spokesman Admiral Craig Quigley described the unusual situation, saying the action was taken "with the full knowledge and consent of all parties concerned," and that the plan -- worked out by NATO and U.S. military commands and approved by DOD, the Macedonian government, and rebel authorities -- was "very situational." It was a step taken to defuse a tense situation, and in no way indicates how U.S. troops might react in future cases, he said.
"Over a period of days it had been the intention of the EU (European Union), of NATO, of the NLA and the government of FYROM to defuse that situation and to get the fighters out of the village and to then reassert Macedonian government authority over the village itself," Quigley said.
In response to a question, the spokesman said that the United States was "the only country that provided troops and assets because we had them immediately available and speed was an important element ... because of rising tensions and the desire to defuse it as quickly as possible."
He agreed that there was an element of risk involved, but said "We put great store in the enthusiastic support of the various parties involved in asking for this operation to take place in the first place."
Asked whether the move had actually become "a provocation for further violence" given resumed fighting a day afterward, Quigley said "I don't think so. There's no shortage of passions in that part of the world on the part of all of the constituencies involved....There are those elements within the Balkans that absolutely did not want to see this action take place ... but we think it was the right one and anything that (could have) been done to defuse that situation and bring about a political solution to the difficulties in that part of the world is a step in the right direction."
QUIGLEY DISCUSSES INCREASED SECURITY MEASURES IN PERSIAN GULF
Referring to the recent move to put U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf on the highest state of alert in response to an unspecified threat against U.S. interests in the region, a reporter asked if the United States was not empowering "the very people we are trying to undercut" by listening to baseless threats from hostile parties such as Usama bin Ladin, who could "pick up a cell phone" and know that U.S. intelligence would listen in and needlessly move troops and assets around.
Quigley responded "You always take a look at the intelligence sources that provide you your information with a couple of different discriminators. You take a look at the sources of the information ... at the credibility of the information that you have received from a variety of means. It's putting together a puzzle and if the puzzle pieces absolutely make no sense at all, you can attribute it to bad intelligence, perhaps intentional feints ... but in this particular case, we feel that the confluence of intelligence information is specific enough and credible enough so that we had to take this prudent, cautious course of action, because you're talking about people's lives."
He continued "If we can put ships to sea, if we can remove Marines from an exercise, if we can increase force protection measures throughout that region and make it harder to attack U.S. forces, then given the circumstances that we see in this case, we felt that that was the right thing to do."
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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