Balkan summit in Macedonia to discuss security, border controls

OHRID, Macedonia (AFP) May 22, 2003
The leaders of seven Balkan countries met here Thursday with NATO Secretary General George Robertson to discuss strengthening border controls to fight organized crime, seen as a threat to regional stability.

The participants are expected to agree in principle on a plan to reinforce border security, which NATO sees as inadequate, with experts due to work out the details on Friday.

"We want to find ways to help (the Balkans) because either this region takes control of its borders or the criminals will take control of the region," Robertson said shortly before the conference opened.

"We've got to stop criminals, because criminals are destroying lives, destroying economies and could destroy this region."

The leaders of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Albania -- all members of the 1999 Balkans Stability Pact - are taking part in the conference, held under NATO auspices.

The meeting is being held in the historic Macedonian town of Ohrid, the site of a 2001 NATO-backed peace accord that ended an ethnic Albanian insurgency in the former Yugoslav republic.

NATO said in a statement earlier this month the conference is aimed at helping the countries in the region cooperate in the fight against organized crime.

"The currently inadequate border security of much of the region has created major problems of drug smuggling, gun-running, human trafficking, and political violence," the statement said.

It also "poses one of the main threats to stability in the western Balkans, as well as leading to further problems in the rest of Europe."

Ahead of the conference, NATO spokesman Mark Laity told reporters in the Macedonian capital Skopje that "we have to crack down the illegal activities on the borders and to open the borders of the western Balkans for cooperation.

"In Ohrid we are starting a process in which you can conclude that you can't speak for border security without regional cooperation."

The European Commission pledged Wednesday to strengthen ties with the western Balkan countries in order to speed up their integration into the European Union, insisting however that "the constant battle to tackle corruption and organized crime" was necessary in order to reach that aim.

Also attending the conference are the secretary general of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Jan Kubis, special coordinator of the Stability Pact Erhard Busek as well as representatives of the European Union and the European Commission.

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