YUGOSLAVIA: UNITED STATES SAYS ITS PEACEKEEPING EFFORT IN THE BALKANS IS EXPENSIVE BUT NECESSARY

Record ID: 338222

  • Title: YUGOSLAVIA: UNITED STATES SAYS ITS PEACEKEEPING EFFORT IN THE BALKANS IS EXPENSIVE BUT NECESSARY
  • Date: 6th September 2001
  • Summary: KUMANOVO, KOSOVO, YUGOSLAVIA (SEPTEMBER 6, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WIDE OF THE VILLAGE OF STANCIC 0.07 2. HAS: CHILDREN PLAYING ON THE ROAD AROUND THE U.S. SOLDIERS 0.11 3. VARIOUS OF U.S. SOLDIERS CHATTING ON THE ROAD (3 SHOTS) 0.24 4. GV: MACEDONIAN BUNKER IN THE DISTANCE/ FLAG DEMARCATING BUNKER 0.29 5. WS/SLV: S
  • Embargoed: 21st September 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: KUMANOVO, KOSOVO, YUGOSLAVIA
  • City:
  • Country: Yugoslavia
  • Reuters ID: LVAED0LXSJMAMQN9AV9BX2RVSH8E
  • Story Text: The United States has said that the peacekeeping effort
    in the Balkans was "expensive", but nonetheless necessary.

    The US Secretary for the Armed Forces, Thomas White, has
    been visiting troops on the Kosovo-Macedonia border. Part of
    the KFOR contingent received medals for their work in
    Kumanovo, securing the border with Kosovo.



    At the border the Macedonian army are keeping a close
    watch on proceedings from their checkpoints.

    The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
    (OSCE) agreed on Thursday (September 6), to virtually double
    the size of its mission to Macedonia, where it will monitor
    the security situation.

    After several weeks during which Russia had blocked
    agreement on extra monitors, the 55-nation security and human
    rights group agreed to send an additional 25 monitors to
    reinforce 26 already there.

    On a visit to troops in Kumanovo on Thursday the US
    Secretary for the Armed Forces, Thomas White said that
    historically, the price of peace has been high.

    "Peace has always been expensive but the decisions have
    been made that we are to pay this price and we are an integral
    part of NATO and NATO has decided and we are here to do our
    part," White said while awarding troops with medals for their
    work in securing the border with Kosovo.

    Scores of people have been killed and more than 100,000
    displaced in an uprising by ethnic Albanian guerrillas in
    Macedonia this year, the Balkans' fifth nationalist conflict
    since 1991.

    The Macedonian parliament voted on Thursday to draft
    constitutional reforms essential to a Western-mediated peace
    plan aimed at ending the conflict.

    The OSCE, which groups the United States, Canada and all
    the countries of Europe, first established a "spillover"
    mission to Skopje in 1992, aimed at preventing wars in the
    rest of former Yugoslavia from spreading.

    Its original mandate was to monitor Macedonia's borders
    with Serbia, Kosovo and Albania.


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