- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 March 2001 12.51 GMT
George Robertson, the alliance's secretary general, announced the move in a flurry of diplomatic and military activity designed to defuse the latest Balkan crisis.
"We'll be asking individual Nato members to add to the troops they have in Kosovo in order that more flexibility can be given to the task," he said.
Nato sources said that 1,000 more men were needed to boost patrolling reconnaissance along the rugged 70-mile frontier, although redeployment within the 42,000-strong K-For might be enough. Britain has no plans to add to the 5,500 men it already has in Kosovo, the Ministry of Defence said.
During the day, Macedonian armour moved into Tetovo, the largely Albanian city that has become the focus of the clashes.
"The Macedonian security forces will soon start a final operation to destroy the terrorists," a government spokesman in Skopje said. "That will happen when our commanders in the field decide that there will be minimum risk of losing lives of security forces."
A presidential adviser later added: "The president has told the generals to flush [the NLA] out of the Republic of Macedonia. .. There is a sense in the back of everyone's minds that if they do not do so now the rebels will pop up elsewhere in the country."
As EU foreign ministers expressed "deep concern" about the situation, its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, flew to Skopje to encourage it to isolate the extremists behind the attacks.
Britain was last night tabling a resolution at the UN security council, but it is unlikely that a new UN force would be set up at this stage.
Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, and current chairperson of the EU's rotating presidency, said that the first priority was for Nato to police the highly porous Kosovo-Macedonian border more effectively. Another option would be to alter the mandate of K-For in Kosovo to allow it to operate in Macedonia, though this might meet opposition from Russia and China.
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putinimplied that western policy was to blame. "Those who armed Albanian separatists now do not know how to handle them," he said.
Underlining his concern, Lord Robertson broke diplomatic ground by joining EU foreign ministers before convening a crisis meeting at Nato headquarters.
"What is necessary .. is to interdict as much of the supplies, the traffic that might be going into Macedonia, so Nato is committed to tightening its controls of the border," he said.
"We are determined that we will starve the limited number of localised extremists from being able to carry out their mischief."
EU officials said that Mr Solana was also urging Macedonia to do more to integrate its ethnic Albanian minority - up to 30% of the 2m population - to defuse resentment and radicalisation. But ethnic Macedonians blame the west for incubating the insurgency.
From the prime minister who feels betrayed, the soldiers who feel unsafe and the fleeing refugees, anger is swelling at the perceived double standards of Nato and the UN.
Officials say the sense of betrayal is acute; Skopje overcame misgivings to help Nato during its campaign to oust Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
Thousands of Macedonians have demonstrated in front of the parliament in Skopje, accusing its government and the west of doing too little.
A sense of events slipping out of control grew on Sunday night when the prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, accused the west of breeding Europe's answer to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
He also claimed that Nato would not recognise that the guerrillas came from UN-administered Kosovo because that would be to admit failure.
Useful links
Macedonian government
Macedonian defence ministry - updates on border clashes
Albanian foreign ministry
Foreign secretary Robin Cook's statement on Macedonia
K-For news updates
