The weapons that NATO troops will collect from ethnic Albanian rebels in operation "Essential Harvest" in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will be destroyed in Greece, Defense Ministry sources said yesterday.
The ministry has accepted a request by the alliance's leadership and the final details are being worked out. This concerns only the weapons and not the ammunition. It is dangerous to transfer the latter and so it will be destroyed on the spot by the Hungarian company taking part in the NATO mission. The plan that has been drawn up entails bringing the weapons to military factories in northern Greece and destroying them either there or at the Halyvourgiki steelworks outside Athens, sources said. Alliance officials estimate that the NATO mission will collect 2,500 to 3,000 weapons but the Greeks will not venture any guesses as to the number. They will also not say where the weapons will be stockpiled in FYROM.
Staff officers in Athens believe that the deployment of the full NATO force in FYROM will not begin before the end of next week. The alliance's council of permanent representatives met yesterday in Brussels but failed to reach a decision on when the 3,500-strong force will be sent to Skopje. The 350 soldiers of Greece's 525 Mechanized Battalion, however, are on 24-hour notice to leave from Polykastro in northern Greece. They will be carrying light weapons and will move around in armored personnel carriers.
Brig. Christos Eleftheriotis yesterday took up his position as NATO's deputy chief of staff in FYROM, under Danish Maj.-Gen. Gunnar Lange. The first detachment of NATO troops left Britain yesterday.
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