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British soldiers from the 16th Air Assault Brigade arrive at Macedonia's Petrovec airport August 25, 2001. NATO insisted on Saturday its latest Balkan peace mission was credible despite criticism from Macedonian's prime minister and government warnings that the operation had to restore stability, not just collect weapons. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

British soldiers from the 16 Air Assault Brigade walk past Lynx helicopters at Macedonia's Petrovec airport August 25, 2001. NATO insisted on Saturday its latest Balkan peace mission was credible despite criticism from Macedonian's prime minister and government warnings that the operation had to restore stability, not just collect weapons. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

Members of the British 16 Close Support medical regiment and the 49th FD SQN explosive ordinance disposal hang from US medical Blackhawk chopper during training at the US military base at Skopje airport, August 25, 2001. NATO insisted on Saturday its latest Balkan mission was credible despite criticism from Macedonia's prime minister and government warnings that the operation had to restore stability, not just collect weapons. REUTERS/Petr Josek

Sgt. Grant Kubacki (R) from the US 50th medical company 101st airborne division, Fort Campbell, Kentucky and Sp. Jason Raglan stand by a medical Blackhawk helicopter at the US military base at Skopje airport, August 25, 2001. NATO insisted on Saturday its latest Balkan mission was credible despite criticism from Macedonia's prime minister and government warnings that the operation had to restore stability, not just collect weapons. REUTERS/Petr Josek

kosovo.com

(INET, 25. 8. 2001.)

Montenegro, 24 August 2001 - One person was killed and another wounded during an attack by "masked men" on a group of men who were working on cutting down timber in the village of Jelenak, Plav municipality, the Montenegrin Interior Ministry (MUP) has advised.

MUP stated that yesterday at 11 a.m. in the village of Jelenak "three unknown masked men, probably from Kosovo" killed Nenad Markovic, born in 1970 in Kotor Varos, Bosnia-Herzegovina, wounded Damjan Bozic (born 1976) and robbed Milorad Tubic, also of Kotor Varos, who were working on cutting down timber in the forest. Emphasizing that the attackers fled, MUP added that the Yugoslav Army was also involved in investigating the case. The UNMIK office in Pec was also informed of the incident.

According to a statement last night by the Montenegrin Interior Ministry, "while Markovic, Bozic, Tubic, Ranko Krdzic and a man with the last name of Pelengic nicknamed "Gypsy" were working on cutting down spruce timber, they observed three unknown men who were masked and armed."

According to the statement these men approached the workers and, while pointing a gun, ordered them in the Albanian language to take the chain saw and head in the direction of the tractor. Pelengic fled and one of the masked men opened fire from a submachine gun, hitting Markovic in the chest and Bozic in the back. One of the men threatened Tubic with a gun, removing his gold chain and wristwatch. Bozic is presently in the Berane General Hospital where he will receive further treatment.

MIA

Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva assessed Saturday at the press conference that her visit to the Balkans countries had come on time just after the signing of Framework agreement and prior to the disarmament of the Albanian terrorists. She also said that the visit was in interest of the neighboring countries, as well as for the countries in the region.

Mitreva met the highest state and political officials in FR Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Greece. According to her, all countries have the same position regarding the developments in Macedonia and fully support the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country, inviolability of the borders, peaceful resolution of crisis, the signed Framework agreement and holding a donor conference for Macedonia. They also condemned the violence and terrorism as model for resolving the political issues. "The general assessment is that the presence of the international community and NATO is necessary in some stages of resolution of the situation," Mitreva said.

According to Mitreva, in the talks she stressed that "the true good neighborly support that can be offered to Macedonia at the moment and on a long-term basis is to close some of the opened issues, what will mean more to Macedonia than offering humanitarian assistance."

"Now when Macedonia is vacillated on the political and economic field, such neighbor gesture will be remembered permanently. It is not time for anachronistic and insane provocations and aspirations and pretentious triumph stated in some neighbor media at the moment when Macedonia is in trouble. On contrary, now is the time to see the greatness of the principle of good - neighborly relations and friendship. All neighbors have learned the historic lesson. The pain of one country on the Balkans, quickly and easily becomes illness of the entire region," Mitreva stressed.

She said that we could understand the politics and the positions of some of our neighbors as they just as Republic of Macedonia were focused on the integration in Euro Atlantic structures and NATO.

Regarding the name dispute with Republic of Greece, Minister Mitreva said that within the talks with her Greek counterpart George Papandreou she has reiterated the position that "the only formula that can be accepted by the Macedonian part is the use of the constitutional name Republic of Macedonia in the international communication, while the only compromise could be made in the bilateral address between Macedonia and Greece."

"It was assessed that there are no political circumstances in Greece yet for such move, and therefore the joint statement said that the talks over the name dispute continue in New York," Mitreva stressed.

Macedonian Foreign Minister said that her activities are mainly focused on financial assistance for our country and that the international community owed that to Republic of Macedonia at this moment.

"After all we have done, all sacrifices we have made and our clear readiness to continue the reforms with the integration in the European structures at extremely high costs, it would be immoral the assistance we expect from the international community and EU to be conditioned," she said.

According to her, the financial assistance for mollifying the consequences from the crisis, we should receive through the strategy of Euro commissioner for foreign policy Chris Patten, the donor conference that would be organized by the European Commission and the World Bank as well as through the projects accepted on the regional conference, which will be held within the Stability Pact by the end of September in Bucharest.

Regarding the bilateral relations they also discussed on continuing the military - technical cooperation in compliance with EU and NATO standards.

Minister Mitreva will continue her tour by visiting Tirana, Saraevo, Zagreb and Ljubljana, after her visits to Germany and Switzeralnd and her address to OSCE in Vienna.

Upon an invitation from the Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, Minister Mitreva will visit Saturday Florina where along with her Bulgarian and Albanian counterparts Solomon Passi and Pascal Milo, she will attend the manifestation "Prespa 2001.

Antiwar

August 25, 2001

NATO continues to undermine the authority of the Macedonian government while elevating the authority of the NLA guerrillas.

- Yesterday (August 24), the NLA announced it had only 2,000 weapons to hand in. The Macedonian government estimated the guerrillas have 85,000 weapons.

- Today, NATO reached an agreement after negotiating with the NLA that the operating number would be 3,300.

- Shortly thereafter, NATO announced that the weapons estimates are non-negotiable (i.e., only non-negotiable with the Macedonian government, since they already had already negotiated with the NLA).

Could this slap in the face be any louder? NATO has chosen to take the word of the NLA and disregard the government estimates. At the same time, they agreed to talk with the NLA (reaching an agreement on the NLA's terms) while refusing to talk to the Macedonian government.

One additional piece of the puzzle:

Today's Independent (UK) reports: "New shipments of weapons are already on their way to the rebels from Kosovo, according to Nato intelligence. And they are probably busy burying caches in Macedonia."

Perhaps they needed the extra 1,300 weapons required by NATO, since they only admitted having 2,000.

AFP

SKOPJE, Aug 25 (AFP) -

NATO's weapons collection mission in Macedonia was on hold late Saturday as debate raged between alliance and government officials over how many arms ethnic Albanian rebels should hand over to be destroyed.

Government sources said that NATO offered to collect between 3,300 and 3,500 weapons from the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA), which has been fighting for greater minority rights since February.

But the figure falls well short of Skopje's assessments.

"We have information that the terrorists have more than 70,000 pieces of weapons and the number that NATO is presenting of 3,500 is laughable," Prime Minster Ljubco Georgievski said in reference to the NLA.

Quoting a well-informed source, Macedonian Independent television station A1 reported that the starting date for the NATO mission, known as Operation Essential Harvest, has been seriously brought into question.

The source said that NATO officials, including envoy Pieter Feith and General Gunnar Lange, had been unwilling to move towards Skopje's estimates of the number of arms .

Alliance spokesman Major Barry Johnson said he had not heard the reports, and that "we are continuing for our operation as planned".

A source close to the Macedonian presidency said Skopje was also angered by NATO's decision to increase the number of personnel taking part in the mission from 3,500 to between 4,500 and 5,000.

The mission, which is due to start early Monday, is scheduled to end in 30 days. The alliance wants to collect one third of the promised weapons by Friday, when parliament sits to debate implementing a wider peace agreement between Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders.

Under the agreement, NLA rebels who hand in their arms will be granted an amnesty, the constitution will be amended to make Albanian an official language in some areas and more jobs in the police and administration will be provided for minorities.

Ethnic Albanians make up around one quarter of Macedonia's Slav-dominated population.

NATO has said the difference in weapons figures comes down to how the arms are counted -- whether explosives and ammunition should be counted along with rifles, mortars and stinger missiles.

A Western diplomatic source said Saturday that the government was divided on what number to accept, with hardliners wanting all offers rejected and moderates being cornered by the large estimates made public.

NATO had been optimistic earlier Saturday. A source close to the alliance said the difference between estimates was small and that an agreement should be reached over the weekend.

The source said NATO would hold more talks with the NLA and that it was important to reach agreement because Operation Essential Harvest has to begin Monday.

A military spokesman said the task force was ready to start its mission, but that the troops remain flexible on when it would begin.

Once a figure is agreed upon, the rebels will take their arms to up to 15 collection points set up in in an arc across the top of Macedonia.

An alliance spokesman said on Saturday that it was hoped that a team of Franco-British soldiers under French command would start collecting the first weapons.

Meanwhile more soldiers from the 12 NATO member nations taking part in the mission flew into Skopje. Troop numbers were expected to swell from 1,800 to 2,460 by late Saturday.

Italy sent in more than 200 military personnel, while Britain, which is leading the mission and whose contingent will make up around half of the task force, flew in 142 more.

AFP

PRISTINA, Aug 25: The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) said on Saturday it has arrested 52 ethnic Albanians suspected of guerilla activities. The 52 were detained in six separate operations between Thursday night and Saturday in southeastern Kosovo along the border with Macedonia, a KFOR spokesman, Major Norman Johnson, said.

Picked up on trails used for smuggling between Macedonia and Kosovo, the men carried weapons and identification documents for the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA), he said.

KFOR says it has arrested more than 500 guerrillas, but most are released within days. The Camp Bondsteel detention centre has a maximum capacity of 190 detainees. In one of the operations, the suspects had opened fire on the soldiers, Johnson said. The peacekeepers had returned fire and injured one suspect.

AP

By Aleksandar Vasovic, Associated Press, 8/25/2001 14:16
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) NATO was moving forward Saturday with plans to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels, but a possible stumbling block the number of weapons the rebels will turn in remained unresolved.

A firm number is crucial because the peace deal that allowed NATO into the country envisions a step-by-step process in which rebels voluntarily hand their weapon caches over to NATO troops in exchange for political reforms. The arms collection is supposed to start early this week, but a figure must be accepted before NATO launches the operation.

NATO announced Friday that it had agreed with the rebels on the number of weapons to be collected by the troops. Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agreement called for the rebels to surrender 3,000 weapons.

But on Saturday, Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said weapons figures as low as 3,500 could hinder the peace process.

''We used to seize that quantity in a single raid,'' he said. ''I think it is ridiculous to speak about 3,500 pieces six months after the outbreak of crisis. I think that if that figure stays we will not achieve anything.''

NATO had presented President Boris Trajkovski with a figure on Friday, and the continuation of discussions Saturday fueled speculation on the extent of the rebel arsenal. The alliance downplayed the dispute over weapons numbers, insisting the government has simply asked for clarification of figures NATO has suggested.

''We have great confidence that this process is going to move forward and that our numbers will be accepted as being realistic,'' said Maj. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for NATO forces in Macedonia. ''We have every confidence that ... the collection sites will be able to begin on Monday as planned.''

Fighting broke out along Macedonia's border with Kosovo in February, after ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency claiming they are fighting for greater rights. The government says ethnic Albanians, who make about a third of the country's population of 2 million, are fighting for a state of their own.

After an Aug. 13 peace deal, NATO's ruling council authorized a total about 4,700 troops to help with disarmament of the rebels. That includes about 3,500 actively involved in the collection of arms and others in administrative and logistic roles, the alliance said.

Despite the dispute over numbers, plans for the arms collection moved ahead Saturday.

NATO officials said Macedonian forces and ethnic Albanian rebels have agreed to pull back from sensitive areas ahead of the collection. Macedonian security forces said they would move to a distance of 3½ miles from sites where troops will collect the arms, NATO said.

NATO hopes to collect about a third of the arms by the end of next week in time for a key parliamentary meeting to launch the procedures called for in the peace plan.

Elsewhere Saturday, U.S. forces said that NATO-led peacekeepers had detained 53 suspected ethnic Albanian rebels as they entered Kosovo from Macedonia in two separate incidents on Friday.

In the village of Gorance, five suspected rebels shot at the peacekeepers, who returned the fire, injuring one, the statement said. No peacekeepers were injured. In a separate action, peacekeepers detained 48 suspected rebels in the village of Zlokucane as they were entering Kosovo from Macedonia.

Kosovo is widely believed to be a main supply and transit route for Macedonia's ethnic Albanian rebels, the National Liberation Army.

Also Saturday, World Bank officials pledged to assist the troubled Balkan country, offering a fresh influx of cash provided a peace deal remains in place.

Christian Poortman, the World Bank coordinator for Eastern Europe, said he and Macedonian officials were meeting to lay the groundwork for a donor's conference called for under the peace accord. Bank officials are considering $15 millions in loans for the country's budget, and an additional $5 million in aid for new municipalities was discussed, Macedonian Finance Minister Nikola Gruevski said.

Still, Georgievski downplayed the willingness of Western bankers to help his country rebuild in troubled areas.

''At this moment I don't see extra dollars ... apart from what was agreed last year,'' he said.

A figure on how much was agreed to last year was never released.

online.ie

online.ie 25 Aug 2001

Rebels in Macedonia say they are beginning to disband ahead of a NATO mission to collect and destroy their weapons.

Their leader, known as Adashi, who commands rebel groups in and around the capital, Skopje, says he is committed to dismantling his forces.

He said the disbanding had already begun and rebel leaders were planning to begin preparations to hand over their weapons to British-led NATO troops.

Adashi said: "We are going to show the world that we are for peace. The 114th Brigade isn't going to have any more soldiers.

"When all is finished, we want our fighters to have an everyday normal life like other citizens."

On Friday, the NATO commander in Skopje, General Gunnar Lange, said both rebel and Government forces would begin pulling back from areas where NATO will set up weapons collection sites to give alliance troops some "breathing space".

Many Macedonians, however, fear that the insurgents' newer and more sophisticated weapons will be hidden in the hills or smuggled over the border to Albania and Kosovo and stashed away there in case they are needed again.

NATO repeatedly has said that its forces will not search for or confiscate any weapons, collecting only those to be handed in voluntarily.

NATO officials said Friday that they and the rebels had arrived at a mutually acceptable figure of weapons to be surrendered.

AFP

SKOPJE, Aug 25 (AFP) -

Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said Saturday that NATO plans to collect only 3,500 weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels were laughable.

"We have information that the terrorists have more than 70,000 weapons and the number that NATO is presenting of 3,500 is laughable," Georgievski told journalists in Skopje.

NATO and Macedonian government officials have been holding talks since late Friday to try to come to an agreement over how many arms the rebel National Liberation Army should hand over to be destroyed.

the Independent

By Justin Huggler in Poroj, Macedonia
25 August 2001

The sound of sniper fire crackled in the background as two British army jeeps nosed their way into the village of Poroj. The gunfire was not far away but then neither was the front line.

A few minutes after they passed through, a man was brought into the village, his face contorted with pain. He had been wounded in the sniper fire, and was hurried into the basement of a non-descript house that serves as the Albanian rebels' field hospital.

This is what awaits British troops in Macedonia. They have not come as peace-keepers, they are here only to collect weapons voluntarily surrendered by the Albanian rebel National Liberation Army (NLA). But they will find themselves in a dangerous, potentially hostile environment. The front lines are still drawn up, and the Western-brokered ceasefire is ignored almost daily or rather nightly. The nights are when the real shooting starts.

A mile or so up the road from Poroj, the village of Neprosteno lies in ruins. What is left of the buildings was smouldering again yesterday after Neprosteno came under fire for two hours overnight.

The British soldiers were looking for the rebels in Poroj, but there were none in sight. Only a couple of days ago, the village was awash with them, and the tea garden off the main square was full of men in uniform cradling Kalashnikovs in their laps. One local said: "There are no fighters in Poroj. We have a ceasefire now." The sound of gunfire had echoed only a few minutes before.

Not until some time after the jeeps had moved on did the truth begin to dawn: the civilians milling around town were the same men who had been in uniform only days before. The order had apparently come down from Sipkovica, the rebels' base high in the mountains over the main Albanian city of Tetovo, for the rebels to come out of uniform. It was yet another piece of spin-doctoring from the rebels who have proved themselves the masters of PR. The smart uniforms were gone, the rebels were prepared to return to civilian life. One old man had kept his camouflage jacket draped over his civilian clothes.

But then the whole exercise of weapons collection is the politics of gesture. No one in Nato believes the rebels will give up all their weapons, not with the risk that the Macedonians will renege on the peace deal and attack them. Ljube Boskovski, the Macedonian Interior Minister, has openly said he wants to go ahead with prosecuting Ali Ahmeti, the rebel political leader, for war crimes.

New shipments of weapons are already on their way to the rebels from Kosovo, according to Nato intelligence. And they are probably busy burying caches in Macedonia.

But what Nato is waiting to see is whether both sides will go along with the gesture, and if the rebels will give up their guns as easily as their uniforms. The alliance said yesterday it had agreed the number of weapons to collect with the rebels but it was keeping the final number a secret. The rebels have claimed they have only 2,000 weapons, while the Macedonian government has accused them of harbouring as many as 85,000. The truth is thought to lie somewhere between.

With the infringements of the ceasefire, and a series of incidents timed to coincide with developments in the peace process, there are clearly some in Macedonia who do not want the peace deal to succeed possibly on both sides. The public line from the rebels remains that they are completely behind the Nato weapons collections, and will give up all they have. The NLA public relations machine is well oiled, and hardened commanders toe the line.

But in Poroj yesterday not everyone was happy. "We have many problems," said one NLA man who would not give his name. "If we give up our arms to Nato, what will happen to the Macedonian soldiers and police?" The Macedonian side has made no commitment to disarm. Recent reports suggest it too has new shipments on the way.

"Under whose control will they be?" asked the young NLA man. "Who will guarantee this peace deal?" His words underline growing suspicions that Nato will be dragged into more than collecting guns in a strictly limited 30-day operation.

The words "mission creep" are on everybody's lips. Yesterday, it seemed the number of soldiers in Operation Essential Harvest would be about 4,700, not 3,500 as the alliance said before. About 2,000 will be British. The 30-day limit will begin only once collections have begun. Nato commanders suggest that could be as soon as Monday.

The NLA's campaign has been a long time in the making, and some of its members seem reluctant to end it now. "This peace deal is only half the solution," one man complained of the peace deal signed under Western pressure, which makes some concessions to the Albanian minority but not enough for everyone in Poroj.

Mr Ahmeti, the rebels' political leader, is desperately trying to present the NLA as behind the deal. One of the men in Poroj snorts: "Ali Ahmeti is happy because he's in his office. He should come and see what it's like in Neprosteno."

the Spectator.uk

Having provoked two episodes of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, first of the Albanians and then of the Serbs, without having thereby brought about any lasting settlement of the original problem, Nato feels morally entitled, or perhaps even obliged, to return to the region. But there is no question of forgiving it because it knows not what it does. The good intentions of Wilsonian imperialism are as nothing when weighed in the balance against the foreseeable violent havoc of such imperialisms practical effects.

The deployment of 3,500 Nato troops, including 450 British, for a period of 30 days after the Albanian National Liberation Army hands in its weapons to them, is either culpably naive or culpably disingenuous. The weapons of the National Liberation Army are like the principles of Barney Barnato, the famous mining magnate of the South African Rand. Gentlemen, he told a meeting of shareholders, those are my principles. And if you dont like them, I have others. So is it likely to be with the NLAs AK-47s.

From the point of view of British national interest, what is at stake in Macedonia? The answer, of course, is nothing; which is precisely why Mr Blair is able to act with such decisive firmness in sending troops there. As with the bombing of Serbia, it requires not a jot or tittle of moral courage to do so, certainly by comparison with the courage a refusal to do so would have required. When nothing is at stake, Mr Blair is firm as a rock; but where matters of deep national interest are concerned, he has all the strength of wet blotting-paper.

Of course, to meddle in the Balkans gives him the illusion of power and influence, and lets him believe that he cuts a figure on the stage beyond these shores A man of his temperament is almost bound to mistake the shadow for the substance. But the whole world knows that he is like the little boy who jeers at the school bully from the safety of his fathers side the father in this case being the United States of America.

Likewise, to agonise over the situation in the Balkans gives a population that is increasingly unable to distinguish between the virtual and the real the impression that Mr Blair is a man both of feeling and of principle.

But in so far as there is any principle at stake in sending troops to Macedonia, it is that of subversion, of the kind that Mr Blair glibly terms modernisation. Our armed forces exist to defend our national interests, and their morale is sustained by their awareness of being the heirs of those who have done so for hundreds of years. What better way could there be of undermining this traditional understanding of their role in national life than to make them perform fatuous and ineffective peacekeeping duties in a country in which we have no interests, economic, strategic or political?

The destruction of existing institutions, so that they might be remade in its own image, is government policy, the sole thread that runs through its actions. To ask a Royal Marine or a paratrooper to perform point duty in a Balkan town is like stuffing an athlete with chocolate; a prolonged period of rehabilitation is necessary afterwards, and the venture is by no means guaranteed of success. The ultimate purpose, or at least effect, of the Balkan adventures of our armed forces is to destroy them as they have been traditionally constituted. It is not to direct traffic in Pristina that tough young men join a famous regiment.

Increasingly our marines and others are being asked to perform duties that are those of a village policeman, combined with a touch of social work. Ironically, our policemen, when they are not offering psychotherapy to the victims of crime, are expected to behave like marines: to go in shooting and leave none of the enemy alive.

Anyone who imagines that the Macedonian problem will be solved by a little Blairite interference, with its apparatus of agreements and laws granting a plethora of minority rights, is surely unacquainted with the region. Albanian irredentism is not going to be satisfied with guarantees of good treatment; apart from anything else, even observers sympathetic to the Albanian cause are agreed that the Albanians had little to complain of in Macedonia before the civil war, unlike their counterparts in Serbia. If that is the case, then no institutional arrangements in Macedonia, even if adhered to, will quell their separatism.

One of the great illusions that a disparity of power encourages among the powerful is that they can make the weak do anything they want the weak to do, and hence that they can remake the world according to a blueprint in their minds. This is dangerous nonsense, and nowhere more so than in the Balkan morass.

Mr Blair would be better employed in tackling our real problems than in bestriding the Balkans, to make himself feel like a colossus. It is easier thus to meddle in Macedonia than, say, to ensure that all British schoolchildren can read adequately, or that litter is collected from our streets; but these are problems whose solution would require precisely the qualities that Mr Blair lacks, such as courage and selflessness.

News.bg

The first official visit of Jordanian King Abdulla II in Bulgaria since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries is due to start on August 25. Jordanian King is arriving on a two-day visit at the invitation of Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov. His Majesty would be accompanied by His wife the Queen of Jordan Ali Abu Ragib and the Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul Ilya Al Hatib. "We hope that the forthcoming visit of His Majesty Abdulla II would intensify the process of official contacts between Bulgaria and the Arabian countries", the foreign policy advisor of President Petar Stoyanov Dimitar Panchev said for News.bg Agency, and continued: "We hope that commercial relations between the two countries would also be intensified, especially as for the participation of Bulgaria in hydro-technical, tourist, military and energy industry projects implemented in Jordan." President Petar Stoyanov would hold a private conversation with his guest. In all probability, the conversation would touch current international issues as well as the trial against Bulgarian medical personnel detained in Libya. Bulgarian President would also explain to the Jordanian King the position of Bulgaria concerning the situation on the Balkans and the conflict in Macedonia, and on his part would get information from the King about the situation in the Middle East, where the authority of Jordan is extremely high due to the late King Hussein, who signed a peace treaty with Israel.