The Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana has confirmed that the alliance is to go ahead with the deployment of a rapid reaction force in Macedonia which would extract peace monitors from Kosovo.

Almost half the fifteen hundred troops will be French.

The rest will be from Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

Their mission will be to rescue peace monitors if they get into trouble.

Belgrade has objected to the deployment -- which is expected to begin in the next few days -- describing it as a pretext to create a force for possible incursions into Yugoslavia.