Visiting Macedonia soon after the terrorist attacks in America, nato's secretary-general, Lord Robertson, described the alliance's search for peace in this southern Balkan state as a "tiny ray of sunshine". A fortnight on, as NATO wound up its 30-day collection of weapons from the ethnic-Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Army (NLA), and arranged to leave behind 1,000 or so troops to protect the international monitors supervising the peace plan, the gleam still seemed there. But delays by Macedonia's government could still remove it.
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