Re:  NATO in Macedonia:  Splendid Little Disarmament By Ian Fisher What after the double blackmail?        

In the International  section of the Monday, August 27 issue of The New York Times On page A8,  Ian Fisher is trying once again to make sense out of the "convenient plan"  that NATO  "has brokered" earlier this month for Macedonia.  Then, on August 13, restraining the President of Macedonia Boris Trajkovski  tight on his seat,  with Javier Solana's friendly hand on one,  and  Lord Robertson's on the other of his broad shoulders, in the presence of sullen faced  entourage if Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and Ministers of his Government, with  the whole Macedonian  nation  watching in disbelief,  they forced the governing team to sign the "Framework agreement".         I can not  dwell on the comical and  ironic "realistic numbers" of weapons to be surrendered  voluntarily by the  Albanian terrorists to NATO  ( only to NATO)   mentioned  daily in the New York Times.  To an ordinary observer  that's children's fables.  But as a Macedonian, and an American,  who once believed in Democracy I still have the chills when I think how worried I was in the Spring and Summer of 1999 about  Macedonia's naГЇve consent to open its borders to the refugees from Kosovo.  Knowing my people,  I knew then,  as I know now, that it was done out of humanitarian, democratic and inevitable need to halt the stampede of  refugees through the whole Southern Balkans.  Now, it saddens me even more to see Macedonia faced with a double blackmail.       A certain rebel commander by the name of Mesues is quoted by Ian Fisher as saying:                If the Macedonians do not respect the agreement…and things carry on as they were before, we will reorganize.  Then it won't be a war for rights.  It will be a war for  our own republic or for partition". This is but an echo of the words spoken by the terrorist war lord Ali Ahmeti and printed in The New York Times of March 23 of this Year in the article of David Binder: "Our Goal is to recepture all the Albanian Territories and  drive out the Slavs".                 How clever to say that the Macedonian government forced the rebels to think of  yet another, maybe less controversial solution of creating not "Greater Albania"  but our "own republic".        That "Republic"  we, the Macedonian's created by seceding from Yugoslavia in 1991.  We voted the secession by a popular Referendum.  Were we then less of Macedonians, Albanians, Vlachs , Romas, Serbs?         I call here upon the attention of all my fellow Macedonians in the country and those living on five continents throughout the world, to keep their eyes wide open and to defend our own Republic of Macedonia, before we fall into the trap of the second finger pointing blackmail and sign the framework agreement we didn't have anything to do in conceiving and of which only the "English Version"  is the legitimate one.                                                                             

 Da zivee Makedonija! 

Dr. Milica Oginar