MACEDONIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: INFILTRATION OF GUNMEN INTO MACEDONIAN TERRITORY THREATENS REGIONAL STABILITY








BRUSSELS, March 9. /Viktor Onuchko, RIA Novosti Correspondent/. Infiltration of armed groups into the Macedonian territory "may pose a grave threat not only to Macedonia's stability, but also for the entire region," Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Srdjan Kerim, said in statement he made Friday in Brussels while speaking at an extraordinary NATO Council session.


	According to him, Macedonia defines itself "as part of the Euro-Atlantic community," and therefore Macedonia's government decided to deal with the problem that has arisen hand in glove with NATO. The international peacekeeping force, or KFOR, is a major factor safeguarding peace and stability in the region, therefore the nation's government deems cooperation with KFOR indispensable in the current situation on the Kosovo border.


	Kerim said the agenda that Macedonia suggests to resolve the problem links "political, diplomatic measures and security measures." The government plans to implement all these measures by forming a broad government coalition including the Albanian Democratic Party.


	None of the political, diplomatic, or other measures that Macedonia's government is now undertaking can be implemented without KFOR's backing. He noted that the plan he submitted to the NATO Council was an indivisible complex of interconnected measures that have preventative objectives.


	The plan envisions a security zone being immediately created along the border on the Kosovo side, where the KFOR would have the leading role, a more stringent KFOR control of all traffic of vehicles, paramilitary formations and numerous human groupings in the vicinity of the border, a streamlined and permanent coordination between Macedonia's Armed Forces and the KFOR, and securing the return of residents into their dwellings in the village of Tanusevci and other nearby villages, which they were forced to abandon.