The Macedonian prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, exacerbated the task of the British-led military mission at the weekend by describing Nato's estimate of the number of weapons the troops need to collect as "laughable and humiliating for Macedonia".

The commander of Nato forces in Macedonia, Major-General Gunnar Lange, told a news conference yesterday that the ethnic AlbanianNational Liberation Army would be ready to hand in 3,300 weapons.

The figure was given to the government on Friday, and provoked Mr Georgievski's response. His government has given the figure of 85,000 weapons, but the government seems to be divided on the issue, and advisers in the president office said the Nato figure might ultimately be accepted "with one or two adjustments".

Unless the two sides can agree on the total number of guns to be collected the Macedonian parliament is unlikely to ratify the peace agreement signed earlier this month.

The Macedonian national security council met under the chairmanship of President Boris Trajkovski last night to discuss the issue.

It remains unclear whether the government will withdraw its forces from around the points where the weapons are to be surrendered. Its failure to carry out its promise to do so may hamper the planned beginning of the collection near the city of Kumanovo today.

But a Nato spokesman said Operation Essential Harvest would go ahead as planned, despite Mr Georgievski's objections. Soldiers of the second infantry regiment of the French Foreign Legion are due to collect weapons in the village of Otlja.

Nato has sent 3,900 soldiers to do the job, just under half of them British, at the Macedonian government's invitation.

Early yesterday two Macedonian men were killed in an explosion in a hotel in the village of Celopek, six miles south of Tetovo, prompting a demand by government hardliners for a new military offensive against the guerrillas.

State television, quoting police sources, said explosives had been tied to the men, killing them instantly. Their identities have yet to be confirmed.

Celopek, an ethnic Macedonian village, is the birthplace of the interior minister Ljube Boskovski, a prominent critic of the peace agreement.

It is the second time a Macedonian building has been attacked. Last Monday a monastery was dynamited in the rebel-controlled village of Lesok, north-east of Tetovo.

The prime minister accused the NLA of co-ordinating both attacks.

"I can say the barbarian behaviour of the terrorists after Lesok is continuing," he said. "Today we have Celopek, and Macedonia has to react with the military or with police."

Meanwhile, the the rebels released four Macedonians taken captive near Kumanovo in May and July.

The men, two civilian and two soldiers, were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in the village of Lipkovo, and driven to Kumanovo.

Over the border in Kosovo the Nato peacekeeping force K-For detained a further 29 suspected Albanian guerrillas operating in Macedonia.

Howard Rhoades, its spokesman, said they were stopped trying to cross the border into Kosovo on Saturday evening.

On Saturday K-For said it had fought and caught five suspected guerrillas and detained 48 others crossing the border from Macedonia. Mr Rhoades said 600 had been detained since early June.

The deaths of two men in a hotel bombing and a dispute between the Macedonian government and Nato cast doubt yesterday over the allied mission to collect arms from Albanian rebels, which was due to start today.

Hundreds of British Nato troops are still arriving in Macedonia for the arms operation in a last-ditch effort to prevent civil war.

The remains of Svetislav Trpkovski and Boge Ilijvski, the first men killed since Nato troops arrived, were being dragged out of the rubble yesterday, even as Nato and the Macedonian government argued over the number of weapons Nato will collect.

At a press conference that was repeatedly postponed as the wrangling continued behind the scenes, Nato's commander in Macedonia, the Danish General Gunnar Lange, announced that troops would collect 3,300 arms, including 2,950 assault rifles and two captured tanks.

But the Macedonian government has not agreed to the figure, which the Prime Minister, Ljubco Georgievski, denounced as laughable. "To talk about only 3,000 pieces of weaponry after five or six months of crisis is ridiculous. I believe that the experts from Nato will correct that number," he told reporters. "Without serious disarmament further fighting is guaranteed."

With that figure, the war would start again as soon as Nato troops left which they are scheduled to do in just 30 days he predicted. If the Macedonian government continues to reject Nato's target, the entire operation may be rendered ineffective.

In a sign of increasing tensions in the capital, police reported a suspected bomb blast in a garbage container in the Sever neighbourhood of Skopje, Macedonia's capital, last night. No casualties were initially reported.

But the Brioni Motel, in the village of Celopek, was a shattered concrete shell after a devastating explosion earlierin the day.

The roof lay caved in over a pile of rubble. The bodies of Mr Trpkovski and Mr Ilijvski, both hotel employees, were found after their feet were seen protruding from the wreckage. Mr Ilijvski was a father of two teenage children.

Macedonian police sources told state television that the wiring of an explosive device had been found tied round the bodies, indicating that the attack was deliberate. Other reports from officials said the hotel had been mined.

Crowds of angry Macedonians surrounded the site yesterday, and some Western journalists had to leave after they were threatened.

The timing of the killings, on the eve of Nato's first weapons collections, was deliberate.

It was the latest in a series of violent incidents that have coincided with important developments in the peace process.

The explosions came days after a Macedonian church was destroyed at the time Nato's most senior general in Europe visited last week.

Ten Macedonian soldiers were ambushed and killed the day a peace deal was agreed. The day before it was signed, several Albanian civilians were killed by police. Rebels are clearly trying to derail the peace process.

The government's objection to Nato's figure for weapons collections appears to be intended to do the same. Mr Georgievski claims that the rebels have at least 60,000 weapons and that Nato's figure does not represent a complete disarmament.

But the weapons handovers were always intended to be a gesture, not a complete disarmament, as Nato officials privately concede.

Nobody expects the rebels to hand over everything and risk the Macedonian side reneging on the peace deal and launching an outright attack on them.

New weapons shipments were already on their way to the rebels from Kosovo, Nato intelligence officials said.

Macedonian police yesterday blamed the Albanian rebel group, the National Liberation Army, for the hotel bombing that killed Mr Trpkovski and Mr Ilijvski.

It was a second more hardline rebel group, the Albanian National Army, which claimed reponsibility for the earlier ambush and the killing of 10 soldiers. The Macedonian police have themselves been involved in earlier incidents.

SKOPJE, Macedonia, Aug. 26 — The plan itself is simple: NATO troops come to Macedonia, at the cliff edge of civil war. They have one job: to collect arms from ethnic Albanian guerrillas, who will deposit roughly 3,300 weapons in orderly piles around the country starting on Monday.

After 30 days, NATO goes home. If all goes well, another Balkan war is, if not ended, at least less likely to explode.

"The collection of weapons is our mission," Lord Robertson, the NATO secretary general, said on Wednesday when he announced the operation. "No more. No less."

By its own narrow goals, NATO's disarmament plan, so different from other, open-ended Balkan engagements, may stand a good chance of success, experts say.

But even as they praise NATO's intentions, some experts wonder how far such a limited operation will go toward preventing all-out war.

Does NATO simply leave, even if all the agreed-to weapons are not collected after 30 days? What if either side commits atrocities or begins a military operation under NATO's nose? Can the combatants make peace once they are alone again, face to face, with no guarantor of safety with NATO's clout?

Then there are the uncertainties and heated emotions in a country in conflict. Just today, despite the official cease-fire, guerrillas were accused of blowing up a motel, killing two people, in Celopek, the hometown of the nation's hard-line interior minister.

Also today, the government refused to accept NATO's estimate of the number of weapons its troops should collect. It contends that the rebels hold 50,000. The number set by NATO is based on a calculation of what would be an appropriate gesture and what would make an actual difference, with an estimated rebel force of 2,000.

"It's just a great puzzle to me," said Daniel P. Serwer, director of the Balkans program for the United States Institute for Peace, a research organization in Washington. "What I cannot imagine is how 30 days of NATO's presence and the collection of a few weapons can be stabilizing. You need this force for stabilization, which is a much broader goal than collecting arms."

With the alliance's credibility on the line, NATO officials acknowledge the risks of choosing so narrow a road.

But, they say, the plan was constructed deliberately, after months of diplomacy. It is aimed at avoiding mistakes of Western powers in other Balkan wars by intervening relatively early, with an achievable goal, and letting the Macedonians do most of the work themselves.

"You can write pages and pages about why this won't work," said Daniel V. Speckhard, a NATO assistant secretary general. "But where does that leave you?

"The trick is to make smaller and smaller the number of radicals on both sides. If you can do that step by step, week by week, you've made the problem smaller and smaller, more manageable and containable."

As in all such operations, politics shaped this plan, and particularly the notion of staying only 30 days. Most of the NATO countries involved, the United States first among them, have little appetite for open- ended engagements like those in Bosnia or Kosovo.

In this case, Macedonian government concerns dovetailed nicely with those of NATO countries. The government, in a low-level war for six months with the rebels, worried that a traditional peacekeeping operation would lead to an ethnic partition of Macedonia, with rebels and Albanians on one side and government troops and the majority Slavic Macedonians on the other.

They say that would effectively turn Macedonia into a western protectorate along the lines of Bosnia or Kosovo. The rebels, whose group is called the National Liberation Army, contend that they do not want territory but equal rights for Albanians, who make up roughly a third of the nation's two million people.

So alliance officials constructed a limited short-range plan that takes care not to impose NATO troops between the two sides. They will be based around the airport near Skopje, the capital, and will leave only to collect weapons at roughly 15 sites or to meet with combatants.

The plan gave something to everyone. Slavic Macedonians have fewer worries about a protectorate. The rebels' war aims are tacitly recognized by NATO's mere presence, though Ali Ahmeti, their commander, argues that NATO should stay much longer. And NATO nations do not have to spend their money or risk their 4,500 soldiers' lives for long. It is, in short, a convenient plan.

"Yes, it is," one Western diplomat said bluntly. "To be honest, that's why everyone agreed to it."

But will it work?

With so many weapons out of the rebels' hands, NATO officials argue, Macedonia will be far less volatile. Disarming is, moreover, an essential gesture for the Parliament to begin enacting a broad peace deal signed earlier this month that significantly expands the rights of Albanians.

NATO officials contend that this political process is more crucial to peace than their troops' presence. The idea is that the rights gained for Albanians "will give them no wish to rearm again," said Maj. Gen. Gunnar Lange, the Danish officer in charge of the NATO forces here.

One rebel commander, who goes by the name Mesues, agreed, saying, "If Albanians are included in the state, police and army, why would we fight against our own people and our own state?" He spoke as British troops began scouting out his area, in the hot spot of Radusa in the northwest.

But he quickly showed just how fragile the entire operation might be. "If the Macedonians do not respect the agreement," he said, "and things carry on as they were before, we will reorganize. Then it won't be a war for rights. It will be a war for our own republic or for partition."

His comments underscored the complex links among the elements of NATO's plan. A third of the weapons are to be collected by Aug. 31, when Parliament is to begin approving the first part of the deal. So if the government refuses to accept NATO's numbers, that could be a problem.

In turn, the rebels will not hand over all of the weapons without assurances that the government will hold up its end of the deal. And for those things to happen and for NATO to finish its job, the cease-fire must hold.

Tim Ripley, a military analyst and correspondent for Jane's Defense Weekly, said NATO's role as "honest broker" rather than a force imposing its will "is significant as a first."

"Also it is significant because it is far more risky," Mr. Ripley added. "The success or failure of it is in many ways in the hands of the parties rather than in NATO's."

Even as NATO carries out the disarmament operation, its diplomacy continues. So far, NATO officials are silent about what they would do if problems develop.

But even if the disarming goes perfectly, the question remains: what happens to Macedonia when NATO leaves?

Experts say it is possible that the two sides will resume their war or that at the least, attacks and harassment on both sides will continue.

And so, experts inside and outside Macedonia say, a clearer vision is needed for maintaining calm on the ground after those 30 days are over to give the peace plan time to take root.

At the moment, NATO says adamantly that its troops should be replaced by civilian monitors and police officers from the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe and the European Union.

But some experts argue that NATO has far more credibility and military might. And it is not certain that properly trained monitors could be on the ground when NATO leaves.

"NATO has already demonstrated how effective it is," said Edward P. Joseph, a senior analyst in Macedonia for the International Crisis Group, an independent research group. But he added: "It is NATO's security that undergirds the political process, a political process that could take months and years. They have it completely backward."

A MACEDONIAN-OWNED motel was blown up yesterday in a part of northern Macedonia dominated by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, killing two workers.

The blast came as NATO troops prepared to start collecting 3,300 weapons from the guerrillas under a shaky ceasefire twinned with a peace plan that is to grant Macedonia’s minority Albanians improved civil rights.

The MIA state news agency said the two employees were found dead in the mined ruins of the Brioni Motel on a front-line riverbank opposite the rebel-held ethnic Albanian village of Celopek.

"There was a big explosion at the Brioni Motel just after 6am and it was totally destroyed," said Shaip Bilalli, police chief for the partly guerrilla-controlled municipality of Tetovo.

Celopek is about six miles south of Tetovo and in the shadow of hills largely held by the National Liberation Army.

A reporter on the scene said the building was reduced to rubble except for a wall and part of the roof. Macedonian police had blocked off the site and several NATO liaison officers arrived in jeeps.

The motel was believed to have had few if any guests recently given its front-line location. Macedonian troops and police in the vicinity were tense after the incident and refused to speak with western reporters. Observers speculated the motel might have been used by security forces as a position to prevent guerrillas crossing the river, but that could not be confirmed.

Meanwhile, NATO’s commander in Macedonia said the collection of 3,300 weapons should end the rebel movement under the peace plan.

But Denmark’s Major General Gunnar Lange said no formal agreement had been made with the Macedonian government on the figure and one was not needed for the mission to begin. "I am a soldier and my mission is very clear. My job is to collect those weapons and that ammunition which the insurgents have declared they are willing to hand over voluntarily," he said.

National Liberation Army (NLA) guerrillas have agreed to hand over the weapons ranging from rifles to two captured government tanks, then disband in return for greater civil rights for ethnic Albanians.

"On Friday we presented the government of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia a figure of 3,300 weapons that the so-called NLA had declared it would voluntarily hand over to NATO," Gen Lange said at a news conference.

"The mission is still planned to be initiated tomorrow [Monday] ... We do believe that once collected and destroyed, the so-called NLA will effectively have been disarmed as an organisation and disbanded."

He said the arsenal listed by the rebels for handing in was close to NATO estimates. Macedonian government estimates range from 8,000 to 80,000 weapons and weapons components whereas the NLA’s original stated figures were 2,000 to 2,500.

The prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, said at the weekend that if NATO collected no more than 3,000 weapons its mission would be a ludicrous failure and war would resume once NATO troops leave, as they are due to do after a 30-day stay.

Asked to comment on the chances of success for a mission the government says will be judged on its ability to restore long-term stability and not on mere arms collection, Gen Lange said major potential pitfalls clearly remained.

"There are no guarantees and the path will not be easy but the alternative is clear. The alternative is war."

THE British-led operation to collect rebels' weapons in Macedonia was thrown into doubt last night when negotiations between Nato and the Skopje government broke down over the number of arms to be destroyed.

In a further blow to peace hopes, a bomb blew apart a Slav-owned hotel and killed two people close to the rebel-held village of Cepolek, seven miles south-east of Tetovo. The government blamed Albanian terrorists.

But militants on both sides have been seeking to disrupt Nato's Operation Essential Harvest, which begins today. Nato has agreed with the ethnic Albanian rebels that their National Liberation Army fighters will hand over more than 3,300 weapons plus munitions.

But the prime minister, Ljubco Georgievsky, dismissed this figure as "ridiculous" - saying the guerrillas had 80,000 weapons at their disposal. Agreement must be reached by Friday when the Macedonian parliament is due to meet to endorse the peace deal and discuss giving new rights to the country's 600,000 ethnic Albanians.

Under the deal, one third of the NLA's weapons must be handed over before parliament meets. Nato's first collection of weapons is due to go ahead today at a rebel-held area near Kumanovo, 15 miles north-east of Skopje.

A reconnaissance team of French Foreign Legionnaires and Royal Engineer mine-clearers will be airlifted in by US Black Hawk helicopters.

Once they radio back that the area is clear of mines, several hundred British paratroopers and French Foreign Legionnaires will go in to secure the outer perimeter of the collection site and an inner cordon within which the NLA will hand in their weapons to be destroyed. Czech paratroopers will stand by to provide a quick reaction force should things go wrong.

The rebels have agreed to hand over two captured T-55 tanks, two captured armoured personnel carriers, six SAM-7 hand-held missiles, 130 mortars and anti-tank weapons, 210 machineguns, 2,950 assault rifles, 600 mines and grenades, 1,100 mortar and rocket grenades, and 110,000 rounds of ammunition.

A senior British defence source described the amount as "credible" and close to intelligence assessments. Nato concedes that the NLA could easily replace the weapons it hands over, but officials say the collection is more about building confidence and is only "one small step" on the road to peace.

Maj Gen Gunnar Lange, in charge of all Nato forces in Macedonia, said: "There are no guarantees and the path will not be easy. But the alternative is war."

In a conciliatory move at the weekend, the NLA announced that it would free 11 Macedonian hostages held in the village of Radusa. However, passions are running high after a series of attacks on Slavs.

The latest bombing came less than a week after a blast destroyed an Orthodox church in the nearby village of Lesok, a Macedonian settlement controlled by the guerrillas.

Yesterday's attack will reinforce the perception among Slavs that there is a concerted campaign by Albanians to drive them out of villages in Albanian-dominated areas.

Only one wall and part of the roof of the hotel was still standing yesterday as police used an excavator to try and find the two bodies among the rubble. A policeman said the victims - a security guard and a barman - appeared to have been tied to a pillar by rebels before the bomb was set off.

Locals said one of the dead men, Svetoslav Trpcevski, 39, had called his mother around midnight and told her he had seen rebels moving around outside the hotel.

TWO Macedonian Slav bodies lay dismembered in the rubble of a village motel yesterday after it was blown up on the eve of Nato’s 30-day mission to collect and destroy 3,300 weapons from the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA).

The bombing of the motel belonging to a Macedonian Slav near the ethnic Albanian village of Celopak led to a protest by about 200 Macedonians at the site of the explosion. They blamed ethnic Albanian rebels.

The breach of the ceasefire in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was followed last night by another bomb, this time in the capital, Skopje. There were no injuries reported after the explosion in a rubbish bin in the northern suburb of Skopje Sever.

The explosions increased the tension surrounding Nato’s plans to start the arms collection operation this morning. So, too, has the total of arms to be collected, which has provoked anger and ridicule from senior ministers of the Macedonian Government.

Major-General Gunnar Lange, the Danish commander of Operation Essential Harvest, gave details of the arms to be collected, even though Ljubco Georgievski, Macedonia’s Prime Minister, repeated yesterday his view that the figure of 3,300 was a "ridiculous" total — the equivalent, he said, of a single raid on an NLA arms cache by Macedonian police. He estimated that the true figure was closer to 60,000 weapons.

Nato sources said they hoped that the Macedonian parliament would approve the political reforms agreed in last month’s peace deal with the ethnic Albanians, despite the huge discrepancy in arms totals.

Nevertheless, the mangled bodies of the two men, who according to some reports had been tied to a pillar with explosives attached to them before they died, illustrated the potential risks ahead for the Nato mission and the country’s security. The state news agency MIA said the motel had been mined and it blamed "Albanian terrorists".

The bodies were found after the explosion at 6.15am at the riverside Motel Brioni, outside Celopak, about 15 miles west of Tetovo. The men worked at the motel and had been sleeping there overnight.

There was some confusion about who was responsible, but the blast appeared to be aimed at undermining confidence in the peace settlement and Nato’s role in collecting rebel arms.

Albanians in Celopak confirmed that they had heard an explosion, but denied that there were any NLA men in the area. Vele Ristoski, owner of the motel, condemned those responsible for failing to allow his two members of staff to leave before blowing up the building. "I have no guns here, no weapons; why has this happened? I could have been here sleeping myself."

In his statement, General Lange said that the arms to be collected included six airdefence systems. British defence sources added that they were shoulder-launched Sam 7 anti-aircraft missiles, which the Macedonian Government had indicated were the greatest threat to its forces.

Nato will press ahead with its 30-day timetable, agreed by all NLA commanders, but sources admitted that the politics of Operation Essential Harvest was proving more difficult to resolve than the mechanics of arranging handover times and locations with the rebel leaders.

Yesterday a French reconnaissance team was scouring for an appropriate location for the first arms collection, due to take place in the region of Kumanovo in the northeast.

In the village of Poroj, near Tetovo in the northwest, the local bearded NLA leader, Commander Leka, with knife, pistol and mobile phone strapped to his side, said that he was waiting to be told when to hand over his 112 Brigade’s weapons. He was unwilling to say how many his brigade possessed and said that Macedonian police were still "shooting at us at night for no reason". But he said he was confident that Nato would provide the necessary security guarantees.

For today’s first arms handover, about 150 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment and 150 French soldiers of the Foreign Legion will guard the weapons collection centre. Macedonian and NLA forces have to withdraw two kilometres (1.25 miles) from their positions once the disarmament begins. All Macedonian heavy weapons have to be returned to barracks.

NOVI SAD, Yugoslavia -- Driving north out of Belgrade toward the Croatian and Hungarian borders, you notice the changes almost immediately. Top Stories

The crumbling concrete typical of modern Balkan architecture quickly gives way to delicate pinks and yellows of Austrian minipalaces. In the towns, the streets are cleaner and traffic less chaotic. Tall corn grows in the flat, wide fields.

This is Vojvodina, and people here say the difference from the rest of Serbia isn't just cosmetic. It's evidence that this province is something special -- calmer, harder working, richer and more cultured. Now Vojvodinans are trying to break free from Belgrade's rule.

What makes this breakaway movement different from the others Yugoslavia has seen in the past 10 years is the same thing that makes Vojvodina different: It's peaceful, measured and multiethnic. Vojvodina is home to more than a dozen ethnic groups, including Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Croats, Ukrainians, Romanians and Germans, and all support autonomy for their province.

"Our ethnic groups are Vojvodina's wealth," said Emil Fejzulahi, vice president of the ethnically mixed and strongly pro-autonomy League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina.

But to politicians in Belgrade already struggling to keep Kosovo and Montenegro inside Yugoslavia, talk of autonomy sounds suspiciously like what they heard from Kosovo Albanians in the early 1990s, which ended in the de facto loss of Kosovo. Right-of-center parties, in particular, warn that this is just the beginning of another separatist movement.

"People in Belgrade don't understand what autonomy is about," said Anna Szerencses, a cultural writer for the Novi Sad-based Hungarian-language newspaper Magyar Szo. "They think autonomy and separation is the same thing, because they've never had this experience of a multinational territory that works well.

"It's very important to stress that Vojvodina is not based on an ethnic principle. People are very diligent here -- farmers are dedicated to their fields, and we all have more or less the same customs."

Unlike the rest of Serbia, Vojvodina largely escaped the harsh rule of the Turkish Ottoman empire. Instead, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and its rich soil attracted subjects from all over Austria and Hungary. As part of Yugoslavia, it saw economic refugees from the poorest parts of the country and more recently took in about 300,000 refugees from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

Vojvodinans are proud of how their province manages to assimilate all these newcomers.

"I was born in Novi Sad, and I was worried that [the refugees of the 1990s] would change the face of Vojvodina," said Mr. Fejzulahi of the League of Social Democrats.

"But it didn't happen. In '93 and '94, you could hear people with Bosnian accents, but not anymore -- they've adapted."

One refugee is Dragan Vukic, 28, a Serb from Croatia who fled the war there 10 years ago. Now he's married and planning to start a family in Novi Sad, the pleasant, orderly capital of Vojvodina.

Even though he feels "Croats will always hate Serbs," Mr. Vukic doesn't have problems with Croats in Vojvodina. "Vojvodina is a different place. Vojvodina is peace and quiet. I lived in Belgrade for four years, but I wasn't happy there. I'm happy here."

Supporters of autonomy argue that with more local control, Vojvodina's various ethnic groups will be able to manage more of their affairs and expand native language schools and media. But the real issue, of course, is money.

Vojvodina accounts for about 50 percent of present Yugoslavia's economy, but the central government only gives back about 30 percent. "We're paying nearly double for this state," Mr. Fejzulahi said.

"The government in Belgrade just takes money," Mr. Vukic said. "Everyone in Serbia is living off food made in Vojvodina." Despite the multicultural rhetoric, it is economic issues that drive the autonomy campaign, said Dusan Dobromirov, head of the Novi Sad office of the influential think tank G-17 Plus.

"They say we have a special culture and a special mentality, and that's true," Mr. Dobromirov said. "But without the economic problem, this kind of thinking wouldn't have such big support."

Only 5 percent of Vojvodinans support complete independence for the province. Many more -- about 70 percent, according to opinion polls -- want to go back to the way it was before the elevation of former President Slobodan Milosevic, when the province controlled its internal affairs and kept its own tax revenues.

In 1992, Mr. Milosevic rescinded the autonomous status of Kosovo and Vojvodina. But while Kosovo Albanians escalated their violence -- the Serbian backlash to which had brought Mr. Milosevic to power -- Vojvodinans relied on political struggle. When a broad coalition formed last year to oppose Mr. Milosevic in presidential elections, three major Vojvodina parties signed on because the coalition promised to swiftly reinstate Vojvodina's special status.

But 10 months after the coalition defeated Mr. Milosevic, nothing has been done. So the three Vojvodina parties have banded together to press Belgrade on the issue. In recent days they have mounted an aggressive press campaign, and threaten that if Vojvodina's status isn't dealt with soon, they will call on international groups to intervene.

"After wasting time, the issue will become needlessly severe, and the price will be much higher than if we had done it on time," Miodrag Isakov, president of the Reform Democratic Party of Vojvodina, told Belgrade radio station B-92. "Ten months have passed, and Vojvodina autonomy has not even been mentioned."

But members of the ruling coalition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) are split on the issue. No one in the government is making official statements, but liberals, led by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, are mostly for autonomy while the right-leaning members, led by Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, are against it.

Last week , DOS agreed to look at autonomy, but nothing specific was decided. At a meeting Tuesday night in Novi Sad, coalition members agreed to begin drafting a new Serbian constitution to redefine the status of Vojvodina based on the principles of decentralization and regionalization.

But at the same time, the Serbian government was asked to come up with concrete proposals by early September for delegating certain powers to the Vojvodina parliament and its executive body in line with the existing Serbian Constitution. After receiving the proposals from Belgrade, the DOS presidency is to study them for two weeks before deciding whether they are sufficient.

"We don't support [a return to the old autonomy] -- it would create a state within a state, a communist type of autonomy," said Aleksandar Popovic, chairman of the council of Mr. Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia. "The point is, they would like to replace Belgrade with Novi Sad."

Countered Mr. Fejzulahi: "Our political enemies are saying 'Today they want autonomy, tomorrow it will be independence,'"

But with independence, Vojvodina would have to deal with defense, border security and other costly issues. "All that is too expensive. It's much cheaper to stay in Serbia," he said.

Mr. Fejzulahi said that of all the foreign investors who have expressed interest in Yugoslavia since Mr. Milosevic left, 90 percent were interested in Vojvodina in particular. Its geographic position, hard-working people and stability are attractive, "but not if they have to pay twice as much taxes as they should" to support less efficient parts of Serbia, he said.

Autonomy would also stem the flow of young people out of Vojvodina, supporters hope. About 50,000 Hungarians have left in the last 10 years, a large portion of them young men unwilling to be drafted and tempted by much better economic prospects in Budapest.

SKOPJE, Macedonia, Aug. 26 -- NATO plans to collect the first of 3,300 weapons, including two tanks, from ethnic Albanian rebels Monday, in an operation that Macedonian authorities dismissed as an exercise in empty symbolism even before it has begun.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski today labeled "humiliating" the number of weapons the rebels have agreed to turn over to NATO, which insisted the surrender is in line with its estimates of the insurgents' firepower. Government officials have put the number of rebel weapons at between 8,000 and 85,000.

And following an explosion that destroyed a motel and killed two Macedonian Slavs who worked there early today, Georgievski threatened military retaliation against the rebels he held responsible, raising the specter of further violence as NATO troops assemble between the insurgents and government forces.

The explosion ripped through a motel owned by Macedonian Slavs in Celopek, six miles south of the country's second-largest city, Tetovo, and just across a river from rebel-held territory. A bartender and a waiter were killed in the explosion, which occurred in the home town of Macedonia's hard-line interior minister, Ljuben Boskoski.

Macedonian police said the two motel workers appeared to have been tied down inside it before the blast.

Both the explosion and the dispute over the number of weapons held by the rebels threatened to derail a fragile and twinned process in which the rebels are supposed to turn over all their weapons in three stages while parliament introduces and then ratifies constitutional changes that expand the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority.

NATO expects to withdraw from Macedonia 30 days after it picks up the first weapon, but the symbiotic process -- disarmament tied directly to parliamentary action -- could easily falter, forcing the alliance to rethink its role. There are already reports in the media in Britain, which provided most of the 3,500 troops here, that the alliance is making contingency plans for a much longer operation and could get sucked into the kind of peacekeeping operation it has strenuously said it would avoid.

On a more hopeful note, ethnic Albanian rebels released seven Macedonians and a U.S citizen of Macedonian descent whom they had held for weeks. Four of the hostages, two of whom were members of the Macedonian security forces, waved as they left a building in Lipkovo, a village deep behind rebel lines in northern Macedonian, and climbed into a Red Cross vehicle, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said.

U.S. officials had attempted and failed to secure the release of the American, sources said. Tonight an embassy spokesman here said officials were happy that he was out.

Vojislav Mihailovic, a retiree, was seized by rebels in June. He was being examined tonight in a hospital in Skopje, the capital, and Red Cross officials said he was in "reasonably good health."

Red Cross officials who met with the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army gave the rebels a list of 26 Macedonian Slavs reported missing. But the rebel group has acknowledged holding only half that number, according to NATO officials.

Red Cross spokeswoman Amanda Williamson said officials had met NLA leader Ali Ahmeti and that more releases could follow.

"Two days ago Ahmeti said he would give us unconditional access to all people being held by the NLA," she said. "We will only have an idea of who remains unaccounted for when we have gone through that whole process."

Some rebel commanders have said Macedonian Slav hostages would be released only if authorities release imprisoned ethnic Albanians and a political settlement takes hold.

A Western-mediated settlement, which cleared the way for the deployment of NATO troops, calls for an amnesty for rebels in the hills, but the fate of those in prison remains unclear.

In the last six months, more than 125,000 people from Macedonia's two principal ethnic groups have been forced from their homes after the NLA began an insurgency, purportedly for greater rights, seizing large swaths of territory in northern and western Macedonia.

In a stern, almost sermon-like tone, Danish Maj. Gen. Gunnar Lange, the military commander of NATO's Operation Essential Harvest, told reporters today that if the linked process of disarmament and political change breaks down, "the alternative is war."

Lange said NATO expected to collect 2,950 assault weapons, 210 machine guns, 130 mortars and antitank weapons, six air defense systems, two tanks and two armored personnel carriers. The rebels also planned to hand over 110,000 rounds of ammunition, he said.

Lange repeatedly refused to be drawn out on what might happen if the Macedonian government rejects as inadequate the numbers of weapons handed over to NATO and parliament votes down the political settlement on which the disbanding of the NLA hinges.

NATO officials said the Macedonian estimates of arms are wildly inflated, although they privately indicate the rebels will keep some weapons and can easily acquire more from Albania or the neighboring Serb province of Kosovo. Alliance officials argued that the process, however symbolic, can weaken the rebels and reestablish the primacy of the political process

SKOPJE, Aug 27 (AFP) - NATO troops begin the task of collecting ethnic Albanian rebel weapons at dawn Monday, just hours after two bomb blasts and amid a row with the Macedonian government over the number of arms to be handed in.

In the latest violence, a large bomb exploded in northern Skopje late Sunday, causing substantial damage but no injuries, police sources said.

The device was placed in a large rubbish bin in a residential area near the Albanian embassy in the Macedonian capital. Shop windows were blown out and several cars damaged.

Earlier in the day two security guards were killed in northwest Macedonia when a motel owned by Macedonians was blown up near the mainly-ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo, state television said.

In other unrest Macedonian police and ethnic Albanian rebels exchanged gunfire near the northwestern town of Tetovo late Sunday, just hours before NATO troops were due to begin collecting rebel arms, police sources said.

The problems facing the multi-national NATO force have been increased by a growing row with the Macedonian government over its target number of arms to be collected, voluntarily, from the rebels.

NATO General Gunnar Lange said Task Force Harvest, as the 4,500- to 5,000-strong force is known, will collect 3,300 weapons not including side arms or ammunition.

"This is not just a gesture," Lange said. "The path will not be easy but the alternative is clear, the alternative is war.

But Macedonia rejected NATO's figures saying they would only encourage the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) to keep fighting.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, a nationalist, rebuffed NATO estimations of numbers once again earlier on Sunday, describing them as "laughable and humiliating for Macedonia".

Government spokesman Antonio Milososki said: "This is not a serious figure and it will encourage them to keep their arms and to continue the war.

"We expected NATO to have a much more serious approach." Essential Harvest is part of a wider peace agreement aimed at bringing an end to conflict that began in February when rebels began fighting, ostensibly for improved rights for Macedonia's large Albanian minority.

The peace accord, reached between political leaders on August 13, offers an amnesty to guerrillas who give up their arms and who are not wanted for war crimes.

It also provides for constitutional amendments that would make Albanian an official language in some areas and boost the number of Albanians in local police forces in areas with a large Albanian population.

Ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of Macedonia's Slav-dominated population of two million people.

NATO will try to collect one third, or 1,100, of the rebel weapons by Friday when Macedonia's parliament meets to debate the implementation the peace agreement.

NATO and government representatives have been debating for days how many weapons the guerrillas should hand over for destruction during the alliance's arms collection mission in the troubled Balkan country.

Officials in Macedonia had said the NLA was holding anywhere from 6,000 to 85,000 "pieces of weapons".

Lange said the 3,300 arms would include two tanks, two armoured personnel carriers, six anti-tank weapons, 130 mortars and 210 machine guns, with the rest of the figure being made up of assault rifles.

"I am going to collect those weapons that they (rebels) want to hand over voluntarily, that is my mission," he said.

Lange said small arms, like pistols, would not be included in the tally, but in addition to the 3,300 listed NATO hoped to collect 600 mines and hand grenades, 1,100 rounds of support weapons ammunition and 110,000 rounds of small arms ammunition.

Figures aside, NATO's operation also relies on an often-flouted July 5 ceasefire agreement holding out.

Earlier on Sunday, the prime minister called for military action after the two security guards were killed in the motel blast near the northwest village of Celopek.

Speaking to journalists, Georgievski said: "I can say the barbarian behaviour of the terrorists (NLA) after Lesok is continuing. Today we have Celopek and Macedonia has to react with the military or with police."

On Tuesday, a 14th century Orthodox church was blown up in the village of Lesok near the mainly ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo.

SKOPJE, Aug 26 (AFP) - Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski called for military action on Sunday after two men were killed in a blast blamed on ethnic Albanian rebels that destroyed a motel near the northwest village of Celopek.

Speaking to journalists after taking part in a Macedonian security cabinet meeting, Georgievski said: "I can say the barbarian behaviour of the terrorists after Lesok is continuing. Today we have Celopek and Macedonia has to react with the military or with police."

On Tuesday, a 14th century Orthodox church was blown up in the village of Lesok near the mainly ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo.

Unconfirmed reports said the Macedonian employees, who had been guarding the motel two kilometres (a mile) from Celopek, had been bound with wire and explosives had been tied to them.

President Boris Trajkovski also condemned the bombing. "With this latest act by Albanian terrorist gangs we are defintely discovering precisely marked plans for the ethnic cleansing of certain parts of Macedonia of Macedonians and others in the non-Albanian popluation," Trajkovski's office said in a statement.

Vele Ristovski, one of the owners of the Brioni motel, said: "I understand they are blowing up a motel to show that they are in control of the territory but I dont understand that they're killing innocent civilians."

But a commander of the rebel National Liberation Army said the motel was not in NLA territory.

A western military source said he believed the attack was not what it appeared to be and was probably a criminal act.

The area around Celopek, which is 80 percent Albanian and 20 percent Macedonian, has frequently seen incursions by NLA rebels.

Celopek is also the birth-place of hardline Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski.

POROJ, Macedonia, Aug 27 (AFP) - The doors of an Audi station wagon burst open and four NLA rebels rush into their headquarters in the village of Poroj. On the eve of the NATO weapon collection mission, assault rifles and pistols are still in their hands.

"We will give up our arms, for sure, but I am positive that many of us will weep," laments Milahim, a man in his fifties from who took up arms and pulled on a uniform for what he says was a few days to defend the village, near the northwest town of Tetovo.

Inside the building, the home of the village's richest man turned over to the NLA, some young fighters are looking over a document on turning in their weapons that was sent by their commanders.

Written at the top of the first of four pages: "For demilitarising the NLA", followed by a breakdown of the fighters and the weapons they will give to NATO.

The village of Poroj, population 3,500, is a hive of ethnic Albanian militancy in Macedonia. In the central square, a monument has been erected to the glory of a youth who died in the NLA ranks in Kosovo in 1999.

A little further on, a plaque commemorates the role the university played in creating an unofficial Albanian university in Tetovo.

Tensions are still high here. Macedonian security forces are not far away and about 30 NLA are on the front line, their comrades say.

Nothing has been done yet to gather together the guerrillas' arms.

"I suppose we will hand them over collectively, that we will put them on a tractor and take where ever NATO tells us to," says one of the villagers. "There are at least two NLA fighters in each house," he says.

From the area around Gostivar, a small town further south, "Commander Doki", who earned his name from his former job as a chemist, wears a red track suit and a tee-shirt. On his belt hangs a pistol.

"In my village we have pooled all the weapons and uniforms too so we can give them to NATO," he explains. "But we are ready to take them up again if it becomes necessary before they are given to NATO."

The guerrillas clearly want to give they impression they are a disciplined force, because their leader, Ali Ahmeti, has said they will cooperate fully with the world's biggest military alliance. But they appear to lack confidence in the scheme, knowing NATO's mandate is only for a month.

"There is some confusion because NATO isn't here indefinitely. If it leaves after 30 days there is a risk that some of us will be tempted to take up arms again," Doki says. "What will we do if the army returns to our villages?"

They fear NATO wants to create a "green line" separating rebel-controlled territory from the rest of Macedonia.

They also fear that the amnesty which the government has promised them will not be granted, and many are already thinking of leaving for neighbouring Kosovo.

Dressed in civilian clothing, 28-year-old Kena has just handed in his Kalashnikov and uniform. He has been fighting near Drenovec on the way into Tetovo and he is waiting instructions on giving the arms to NATO.

However he warns: "It will be easy to re-arm. You can buy a Kalashnikov anywhere in this region, even from the Macedonians. And we will have even more modern equipment then."

LONDON, Aug 27 (AFP) - A British newspaper claimed Monday to have tracked down a Serbian man accused of one of the worst atrocities of the Kosovo war.

According to The Guardian daily, Misko Nisavic is running a driving school, called Boss, from the ground floor of a seven-storey block in the central Serbian town of Kraguljevac.

He is wanted by the Serbian authorities and war crimes prosecutors from the Hague tribunal for his role in the slaughter of a family of 49 ethnic Albanians in the town of Suva Reka in March 1999, the paper reported.

He has refused to speak to the paper but, through his sister, denounced the accusations as lies. "He told me to tell you he never did anything," she told The Guardian.

A leading official in the Serb interior ministry, Captain Dragan Karleusa, reportedly promised the paper that it would follow up all leads saying: "There is no hiding place in Serbia for war criminals."

Karleusa has helped investigators from the FBI and the Hague to sift through the mass graves of an estimated 1,000 Albanians dotted around Serbia, the left-leaning broadsheet paper said.

PODGORICA, Yugoslavia - Two women take turns bathing outdoors in a plastic tub. A man fetches water from a crude homemade well. A housewife cooks her evening meal in an electric skillet set on the floor.

This is life at the Konik 1 refugee camp on the outskirts of Podgorica, capital of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro and home to some of neighboring Kosovo's forgotten refugees 1,600 Gypsies who fled two years ago.

``Humanitarian aid agencies are forgetting us,'' Gazi Redzep, 27, said as he and relatives grumbled about the elimination of food deliveries for adults, a water shortage and trash littering the rocky ground.

Redzep and his family fled the city of Djakovica in the aftermath of NATO's 1999 air war on Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, the southern Serbian province. At least 30,220 Gypsies, also known as Roma, fled after accusations that they had collaborated with Serbs who committed atrocities against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

``We had only two choices: To escape and live, or to die,'' Redzep said.

Now they live in wooden barracks on a dusty plain outside Podgorica. Down the road is a junkyard filled with scrap automobiles; across the street are rusted, cast-off appliances.

Although they have communal bathhouses and wood-burning stoves to cook their meals, many Roma holed up at the camp seem just as happy to do things in humbler, more familiar ways.

The refugees at Konik 1 are just a portion of the 7,200 Roma remaining in Montenegro since Kosovo came under U.N. and NATO control when Serb troops withdrew from the province.

Many refugees say they would like to go home, but they fear reprisals.

``Our family is thinking about returning, but no one is safe,'' said Mifail Nazifi, 38, who lives in a fastidiously neat two-room unit with 10 relatives.

Nazifi, who fled the city of Vucitrin, is one of the lucky ones, holding a steady job as an assistant at a health clinic at the camp. Some Roma are able to land day laborer jobs, while others dig in trash cans for food, he said.

``Since we came here, we didn't receive a dime'' from aid groups, Nazifi said.

Robert Breen, head of U.N. refugee operations in Montenegro, said that starting in April, aid agencies decided to hand out food only to those most in need: children, the elderly, the ill and single-parent households.

``Many of the people are, in fact, working in the Roma camps. They are not wealthy ... but they are getting by,'' Breen said.

The refugees at Konik 1 live in rent-free housing, and the cash-strapped government of Montenegro, which together with Serbia makes up Yugoslavia, says it is doing the best it can to support them.

``The social situation in Montenegro is not good at all, but we are doing our best to help all the refugees who come here,'' said Djordje Scepanovic, the government's commissioner for refugees.

Montenegro, with a population of only 650,000, has 47,000 refugees living within its borders. Besides the Roma, there are about 25,000 other people from Kosovo and 15,000 refugees who have been here since the Bosnian and Croatian wars of the early 1990s.

Unlike Kosovo Serbs, who have strong advocates in the Yugoslav government, few are lobbying for the return of the Roma to their prewar homes.

Those who speak Albanian, own property or have relatives who remained in Kosovo have the greatest chalae of returning, Breen said.

Feelings about Roma vary widely within Kosovo. Some allegedly helped the Serbs during the war by digging graves and loading bodies onto trucks and looted homes of ethnic Albanians. In other communities, Roma fought alongside ethnic Albanian rebels and are readily accepted.

``In some villages they're completely tolerated; they just left as a precaution. In other villages, they were chased away,'' said Astrid Van Genderen Stort, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee office in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

Efforts to encourage their return were knocked off track last year when four Roma men were gunned down shortly after they moved back to their home in central Kosovo.

``That was really a setback,'' Van Genderen Stort said. ``And at the same time, it made us more determined not to let it stop returns.''

LIPKOVO, Macedonia - Angele Cvetkovski's family swarmed around him the minute he stepped from the Red Cross jeep, tearfully celebrating his release after being held by ethnic Albanian rebels for nearly two months.

The joyful scene was one of eight reunions Sunday in Macedonia, where NATO troops have been moving in to start a mission aimed at averting all-out civil war.

Ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia freed eight hostages, an act of goodwill ahead of the start of NATO's weapons collection mission in Macedonia.

``Daddy! Daddy! We all love you!'' his daughters shouted, unwilling to stop and give their names to reporters watching the scene unfold.

Also freed was Vojislav Mihajlovski, who holds dual Macedonian-American citizenship. The International Committee for the Red Cross, who assisted in the releases, declined to reveal information on his capture or personal details.

``You see that we are alive and we are OK,'' said Romeo Zivic after his release near the northern city of Lipkovo. ``There were some good and bad moments the commanders treated us correctly.''

An estimated 18 others remain in the custody of the rebels, the so-callled National Liberation Army.

``This is a very positive development,'' said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman for the ICRC. ``This follows a commitment given three days ago to the ICRC that we will have immediate and unconditional access to all those people held by the NLA.''

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO revealed Sunday that it plans to collect 3,300 weapons from ethnic Albanian militants in a delicate operation it described as being Macedonia's only alternative to war.

By revealing the figures, NATO sets boundaries for its mission in Macedonia. Called Operation Essential Harvest, it envisions NATO troops setting up collection sites to take weapons as rebels turn them in. NATO has said it plans to complete the process in 30 days and leave.

But the number of weapons NATO decided on could become an obstacle to carrying out the plan.

Macedonian government officials, who say the rebels have thousands more weapons than they have admitted to, said later Sunday that they had not agreed to accept NATO's figures.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, a consistent opponent of the weapons collection plan, described NATO's estimates of rebel arms as ``humiliating.''

The dispute opened the possibility that the weapons collection process won't start as planned Monday. By early Sunday evening, political leaders had failed to order their forces to pull back from areas surrounding drop-off sites - a key requirement for NATO to start weapons collections.

``Our regrouping will be simultaneous with the arrival and deployment of NATO troops,'' said Marjan Gjurovski, the Macedonian defense spokesman.

NATO's announcement came hours after a deadly explosion ripped through a motel, killing two people and further complicating the alliance's efforts to build confidence between the rebels and the government ahead of its mission.

The Macedonian-owned motel was located in Celopek, a village six miles south of the predominantly Albanian city of Tetovo.

Georgievski called the attack ``barbaric.''

``I have suggested that Macedonia must legitimately respond or retaliate either with a military or police action,'' he said. It was unclear if the government would actually act.

Police also reported an exchange of infantry and artillery fire in the Kumanovo area northeast of the capital, Skopje. Security forces ``responded adequately,'' police said.

The planned NATO mission is the alliance's attempt to avert more bloodshed in this ethnically torn nation.

Fighting broke out along Macedonia's border with Kosovo in February after ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency claiming they were 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.

The peace deal envisions a step-by-step process in which rebels will hand over weapons to NATO in exchange for political reforms in Macedonia. Since a third of the weapons are to be handed over in exchange for moves in parliament, the figure had to be revealed in advance.

``There are no guarantees and the path will not be easy and the alternative is clear,'' said Maj. Gen. Gunnar Lange, the military commander of Operation Essential Harvest. ``The alternative is war.''

Despite rebel claims to have only a few thousand weapons, the Macedonian government had claimed the insurgents have 85,000. A key Macedonian official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that hard-liners in the government will continue to demand more collections in an attempt to obstruct constitutional reforms envisioned under the peace agreement.

NATO, which is in Macedonia at the invitation of the government, would be unlikely to act unless all the parties are on board - even though it has repeatedly stated it has come to this troubled Balkan country not as a peacekeeper but only to collect weapons voluntarily handed over.

Also Sunday, rebels in the northern town of Lipkovo released four hostages - two reservists and two civilians - in an apparent goodwill gesture. And despite the dispute, ethnic Albanian rebels continued preparations to hand over weapons in places like the front-line village of Nikusak.

Rebel commander Adashi claimed that his 114th Brigade would be the first in the country to surrender its arms. The brigade, whose area of responsibility includes Skopje, pledged to hand over a third of its weapons as planned Monday.

Included in the cache are automatic rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

BERLIN - The leader of Germany's conservative opposition said Sunday she expected her party to back the sending of troops for NATO's mission in Macedonia after she met with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote.

Conservatives had made better funding for the German military a condition for backing the sending of up to 500 troops to serve for 30 days in the NATO mission to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels.

Christian Democrat party leader Angela Merkel met Schroeder Friday in a bid to maintain the usual solidarity of Germany's main parties on foreign policy matters that has helped the reunified country take on a greater role in the western alliance.

In an interview on German television Sunday, she said she was ``very optimistic that we can reach a responsible solution.''

Conservative lawmakers, some of whom have urged broad backing for the deployment, would be free to make up their own minds which way to vote in a special parliamentary session on Wednesday, she addgg.

``This is not an area for the classic politics of opposition,'' she said in an interview published earlier Sunday by the Welt am Sonntag weekly. ``It's about taking responsibility for our soldiers.''

Dissenters across the political spectrum argue that the mission is ill-defined, dangerous and prone to drag out longer than foreseen. Some 30 members of Schroeder's own party are reluctant to send troops, as well as members of the Social Democrats' junior coalition partner, the pacifist-minded Greens.

But liberals and some conservatives have argued openly in favor, and Schroeder has repeatedly said he's confident of parliamentary backing.

NATO Secretary-general George Robertson underlined in another German newspaper Sunday that the alliance ``cannot abandon this until recently so peaceful country in this critical hour.''

The success of the NATO mission could determine ``whether it soon comes to another bloody civil war, or whether the spiral of violence is broken once and"for all,'' he told Bild am Sonntag.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Friday that Germany must participate in the NATO mission partly to help Europe preserve good relations with the United States on security issues.

On Monday, Fischer will meet Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva in Berlin to discuss efforts to stem conflict in the Balkan country, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Nato will start collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels as planned on Monday despite failure to agree on the number of arms at stake.

But hours before the operation gets under way, the Macedonian Government has put forward a new set of demands.

An advisor to the Macedonian president told the BBC that at the end of the exercise, the Macedonian security forces expected to be able to reoccupy territory held by ethnic Albanian rebels.

And the alliance's peace-building efforts were further overshadowed by two bomb blasts.

The first explosion in a hotel left two Macedonians dead. A second outside the Albanian embassy in Skopje on Sunday night is not thought to have claimed any casualties.

Nationalist Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski called for retaliation over the first blast which was blamed on ethnic Albanian rebels.

Nato officials and the Macedonian Government have been debating for two days how many weapons the guerrillas should hand over in the 30-day operation.

NATO plans to collect 3,300 arms under a peace agreement.

Mr Georgievski described the figures as "laughable and humiliating for Macedonia", declaring the real number to be at least 70,000.

But Nato General Gunnar Lange, said: "This is not just a gesture.

"The path will not be easy but the alternative is clear, the alternative is war."

Observers say the latest blasts prove that there are clearly those in Macedonia who are not interested in peace at this moment.

The hotel stood in an area where both Macedonians and ethnic Albanians have their homes. The building itself belonged to Macedonians and the two hotel staff who were killed were Macedonians.

Police say they are investigating the second blast, which took place in Skopje's Sever district.

State-run radio also reported exchanges of gunfire between security forces and rebels north east of the capital, Skopje.

The collection of weapons is a key part of an agreement designed to end months of conflict in the Balkan state, exchanging the surrender of arms for amendments to the constitution benefiting the country's ethnic Albanian minority.

The government also wanted to see the swift return of Macedonians forcibly displaced from their homes estimated at 40-50,000 people and the release of all prisoners.

But the peace process was boosted with the release of eight prisoners - two soldiers and the rest civilians, including an American citizen - by ethnic Albanian rebels.

The prisoners were later reunited with their families.

Parliamentary moves are meant to accompany the surrender of the weapons.

Members of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army, (NLA) who say they have been fighting to improve the lot of their ethnic minority, will be granted an amnesty.

Amendments to the constitution will make Albanian an official language in some areas, and more jobs in the police force and in the public sector will be created for minority groups.

Forensic investigators in Bosnia Herzegovina have uncovered a mass grave believed to contain the remains of 19 people killed by Serb forces in the first month of the Bosnian war.

The bodies were lying at the bottom of a deep pit near the southern town of Nevesinje, around 20 km from Mostar.

Between 20-30,000 people are still missing after the war, which ran from 1992 to 1995.

Bosnia's terrain is pitted with mass graves, but few people know where they are. Many of those who do know are the ones responsible for the killings.

They are reluctant to come forward, fearing indictment by the UN War Crimes Tribunal.

The mass grave near Nevesinje is believed to contain the bodies of 19 Muslims executed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1992, shortly after they took control of the area around the southern city of Mostar.

Lone survivor

Investigators began exhuming the site after a tip-off from an elderly Muslim man who said he was the only survivor.

The bodies lay at the bottom of the pit in a remote area which is flooded for much of the year.

However there may be more than one group of people buried there.

One official said an item of clothing had been provisionally identified by a family who said it belonged to their 16-year-old son.

And there was other evidence to indicate that a family of five might also be buried there.

Not all the remains could be retrieved. Those that have been recovered will go for DNA analysis.

Experts will match blood and bone samples against those provided by the families of the missing.

Finding the mass graves is critical if the families are ever to receive any answers.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug 26 (Reuters) - NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo said on Sunday they had detained a further 29 suspected members of an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group operating in neighbouring Macedonia.

Howard Rhoades, spokesman for the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, said they were detained when they tried to illegally cross the border into U.N.-governed Kosovo on Saturday evening.

``They were all arrested and transported to Camp Bondsteel,'' he said, referring to the main U.S. military base in Kosovo.

KFOR, which secures peace in the ethnic Albanian-dominated province since NATO's 1999 bombing campaign on Yugoslavia, has made numerous such arrests over the last few months.

It stepped up its surveillance along the border with Macedonia after the government there complained that many of the insurgents battling government forces since early this year had come from Kosovo.

``This is a continuation of the efforts by KFOR to stop all illegal crossings by (guerrilla) suspects, to screen them and confiscate their weapons and equipment,'' Rhoades told Reuters.

On Saturday, the peacekeepers said they had fought and caught five suspected guerrillas and detained 48 others crossing the border from Macedonia where NATO forces are preparing to confiscate arms of ethnic Albanian guerrillas in a peace plan.

KFOR said it wounded one man in the gunbattle on Friday before taking him captive along with four comrades after they illegally crossed the border into southern Kosovo from Macedonia's mountainous northern region.

Rhoades said on Saturday that KFOR has detained up to 600 members of the guerrilla National Liberation Army (NLA) since the beginning of June.

The NLA guerrilla group in Macedonia says it is fighting for more rights for the country's one-third ethnic Albanian minority. Macedonians say the guerrillas want to hive off part of the former Yugoslav republic.

NATO decided on Wednesday to deploy 4,500 troops in Macedonia to collect arms from the NLA in order to preserve a fragile ceasefire agreed to by the rebels and the government as part of a peace deal.

Although the guerrillas were not party to the peace accord granting Macedonia's Albanians greater civil rights, they agreed to disband in return for reforms that they declared were their objective.

SKOPJE, Aug 27 (Reuters) - NATO troops expect to collect the first weapons surrendered by guerrillas in Macedonia on Monday.

Undeterred by government warnings that its latest attempt to prevent ethnic war in the Balkans was flawed from the outset, the alliance declared that plans to destroy 3,300 arms under a precarious peace pact would effectively disband the rebel force.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, who advocated renewed strikes against the guerrillas after a blast ripped through a motel in rebel-held territory, called the figure ``ridiculous and humiliating'' and said an operation on these terms would fail.

The NATO mission's commander denied the disarmament would be merely cosmetic, even though NATO admits the National Liberation Army (NLA) rebels can restock their arsenal at any time. There was no alternative to the alliance plan except war, he insisted.

``The turning in of 3,300 weapons plus an additional serious amount of other deadly armaments is not just a gesture,'' Major General Gunnar Lange said.

``It is a very real and substantial effort to remove the combat effectiveness of the so-called NLA.''

Just hours before British-led troops were due to open the first arms collection point, state news agency MIA reported heavy exchanges of fire in a volatile area east of Tetovo, home to the biggest concentration of minority Albanians in Macedonia.

Many Macedonian residents have fled the region after NLA gunmen seized a string of villages. President Boris Trajkovski said NATO's mission could only be judged a success if they were able to return home and state security forces regained control.

After Sunday's explosion at a Macedonian-owned motel, which killed two employees, Trajkovski said the NLA's claim to be fighting for minority rights was being exposed as a sham.

``This criminal act by Albanian terrorist gangs clearly reveals a precise plan to cleanse parts of Macedonia of their Macedonian and non-Albanian population,'' he said in a statement.

Unless NATO can collect an impressive enough arsenal to persuade a nationalist-led parliament not to renege on promises to pass reforms improving Albanian civil rights, the mission may hit serious trouble before all 4,500 alliance troops arrive.

Parliament convenes on Friday and NATO desperately needs momentum to win over a deeply sceptical Macedonian public.

A bomb planted in a rubbish bin exploded in a suburb of the capital Skopje on Sunday night, raising tensions further. No one was injured, but residents said shop windows were blown out.

Efforts to reassure Macedonians that the West will do more than implement a cosmetic peace were bolstered by the release of eight Macedonian prisoners held by the NLA. But 18 others are registered missing by the International Committee of the Red Cross, to whose staff the freed men were handed over.

The government suspects the guerrillas will simply stash weapons or resupply with arms smuggled from neighbouring Kosovo, where separatist Albanian kin predominate.

NATO, which has 40,000 peacekeepers stationed over the border, has intercepted 82 suspected NLA members in the past two days. But it admits it cannot seal porous frontiers with Kosovo and Albania, both of which are awash with weapons.

The rebels fear being left helpless against security forces itching for revenge after failing to crush the insurgency. They want NATO to stay beyond the ambitious 30-day timeframe set for disarmament and police a ``Green Line,'' which it rules out.

Diplomats said Macedonian forces were being slow to withdraw artillery and tanks from front lines to help defuse hairtrigger tension. A government official said later ``misunderstandings have been cleared up'' and arms collection could start on time.

A rebel commander in the village of Lipkovo said his men were ready to turn in their weapons, but warned there had to be reciprocal progress in ratifying reforms under the peace deal -- a twin-track process due to be completed in three phases.

``We're going to do as we promised and hand over a third of our weapons by Friday,'' said the burly guerrilla, who uses the nom de guerre Adashi. ``Now it's up to the Macedonians to keep their side of the bargain when parliament meets.''

LIPKOVO, Macedonia, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian rebels released eight Macedonian prisoners to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Sunday in two separate handovers.

Four men captured by guerrillas in the former Yugoslav republic and released in Lipkovo, a village deep behind rebel lines, smiled and waved as they climbed into a Red Cross vehicle. Two were members of the Macedonian security forces.

Another four men were reunited with their families in the capital Skopje several hours later, having been handed over to the ICRC near the village of Radusa, also in the rebel heartland of northwest Macedonia.

They looked tired and dazed as they climbed out of the back of two ICRC cars to be greeted by waiting cameras. Their families surrounded them and shed tears of relief marking the end of three to four weeks of anguish.

``We were contacted once, and have not talked to him for the last 25 days,'' one relative said.

He added that three of the group had been kidnapped by the guerrillas in a market in the Albanian-majority town of Tetovo on June 28.

Amanda Williamson, ICRC spokesperson, said the Red Cross had given the National Liberation Army (NLA) rebels a list of 26 Macedonians reported missing by their families.

But the NLA has so far supplied information on the fate of only half that number, a senior NATO official said.

Red Cross officials met rebel leader Ali Ahmeti two days ago to seek access to the remaining captives and assurances that they were being kept well. He promised ``unconditional access'' to those still being held, Williamson said.

``This is a very positive development,'' she told reporters at the ICRC's headquarters in Skopje. ``We have been waiting for months to visit some of these people.''

Angry Macedonians, who have blocked a road vital for supplying the alliance's peacekeeping mission in neighbouring Kosovo, have demanded that NATO secure the release of all NLA prisoners.

The two civilians released in Lipkovo had been held since May, while the other two were seized in July. Most of the rest reported missing are believed to have been captured in the volatile Tetovo region, 60 km (40 miles) to the west.

The NLA occupied ethnically mixed villages on a contested road in the area last month. Most Macedonians fled as a result.