By Nicole Winfield
February 25, 1999
China struck back at Macedonia for establishing relations with Taiwan on Thursday, vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have kept U.N. peacekeepers in the strategic Balkan country for another six months.
Overriding concerns that the conflict in neighboring Kosovo could cross the border, Chinese Ambassador Qin Huasun cast the vote, marking only the fifth time that Beijing has used its veto on a council resolution. Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov abstained from the vote, saying Moscow's amendments had not been taken into consideration.
China's veto was a major blow to the United Nations, which has held up the Macedonia mission as a model of preventative peacekeeping. The U.N. Preventative Deployment Force was dispatched to Macedonia in 1992 during the Bosnian war to prevent the spread of the ethnic conflict.
China severed ties with Macedonia after it established diplomatic relations last month with Taiwan. Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province with no right to its own international relations. Taiwan has diplomatic relations with just 28 countries, most of them small and poor countries in Latin America and Africa that it supports with aid, loans and investment.
Macedonia received promises from Taiwan for direct economic aid worth $235 million and possibilities for $1 billion in investments. Diplomats said they were disappointed with the vote, citing the still unresolved situation in neighboring Kosovo. The threat of a spillover of violence is high because Macedonia has its own ethnic Albanian minority.
The diplomats planned to press China to reconsider its position by introducing another resolution to re-establish the force, but they were not optimistic.
A NATO force already in Macedonia to assist with international observers in Kosovo was a possible replacement, diplomats said. The force could be supplemented by the 360-strong American contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Macedonia. On Thursday evening, the Macedonian government agreed in principle to allow the transit of NATO troops en route to Kosovo for deployment there.
In the Macedonian capital of Skopje, Foreign Minister Aleksandar Dimitrov told state-owned radio Thursday that the government never expected China would use the Taiwan dispute to block the extension because the troops had done such a good job stabilizing the region. "Macedonia has a legitimate right to establish relations with any country," he added.
China has only used its veto four times before, most recently in 1997 when it voted against sending a U.N. mission to Guatemala. Beijing was incensed that Guatemala had invited a Taiwanese delegation to attend a ceremony marking the end of its civil war. Two weeks after its veto, China agreed to send the force and voted favorably in another resolution.
