NATO Secretary-General Mr George Robertson visits Macedonia today to inspect Operation Essential Harvest, the alliance mission to collect weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels.
Mr Robertson will face scepticism from members of the Macedonian majority, who doubt that the 3,300 arms NATO aims to collect is anything like the rebels' full arsenal and question whether the rebels will hand in any of their best weapons.
Mr Antonio Milososki, the Macedonian government spokesman, said yesterday the operation should be renamed ‘Museum Harvest’ as the weapons collected would be nothing more than museum pieces.
NATO officials insist comments like those by Mr Milososki, an ally of outspoken Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski do not reflect the views of the mainstream.
They point out that the mission, which began on Monday and is scheduled to last 30 days, is being carried out at the invitation of the Macedonian government as part of efforts to stop the country sliding into civil war.
The tense situation in the country was underlined just hours before Mr Robertson's visit as a blast thought to have been caused by a bomb went off at a primary school for ethnic Albanians in a suburb of the Macedonian capital Skopje early today.
Under a Western-backed peace plan agreed this month, the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) agreed to hand over arms in return for greater rights for the country's ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about 30 per cent of the population.