Chairman WARNER. The problem with that is that this is being transcribed for use by many others.

General RALSTON. Let me talk to colors. The country in orange is Macedonia, that is what we are talking about.

Now, if you would come down to the southeast there, in Greece, at the top of that border, you will see Thessaloniki. Point out Thessaloniki, right there. That is where all of our supplies going into Kosovo come into that port. They then go overland, up through the orange country of Macedonia, into Kosovo, which is right at that point, right there.

Now, as I said before, we have about 5,000 of the KFOR forces, mostly supply troops, mostly logistics troops that are in Macedonia.

One of the things that is of concern when we have the instability there is our supply route, so I have recommended to NATO, and NATO is looking at alternate ways of making sure that we can supply our forces that are in Kosovo.

One way to do that is through Albania. Another way is through Montenegro. Another way is through southern Serbia, as our relationships with Belgrade have improved, and we are doing the prudent planning now that would allow us to have alternative supply

routes.

The problem in Macedonia itself-let me go to the next chart. On this same map, you see where Kosovo is there, and notice the area in blue that goes into southern Serbia and down into Macedonia. Those areas in blue are those areas in Serbia and in Macedonia where there is a majority Albanian population. Even in Serbia, that area in blue, they have greater than 50 percent Albanian population there. In Macedonia itself you have about a 65-35 split. About 65 percent of the population is Slavik, about 35 percent is Albanian.

The Government of Macedonia is a democratically elected Government, and it is a coalition Government, including members of the Albanian population. We have encouraged the Macedonian Government to give political access and economic opportunity to the minority Albanian citizens that are there.

The extremists that you hear about in the paper, right now I believe this is not something to be alarmed about. It is something always of concern when you have potential violence, but we believe that there are approximately 100 extremist Albanians that are involved in the hostilities.

My advice to NATO has been that we need to condemn extremism wherever it comes from, and in this particular case from the

Chairman WARNER. You are correct. We can do that in 222 Rus

sell.

General RALSTON. First of all, as you can see, in Operation Northern Watch I support General Franks in his operation overall in Iraq, and what I am talking about here is just the northern part of that, which is the no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel.

I thought it might be useful to show a typical mission. We take off out of Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. You fly to the east for about an hour. You form up where those little circles are in different orbits, with a rather large force, about 40-some airplanes. There are tankers, there are Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), there are F-15s, F-16s, EA-6Bs for defense suppression, there are reconnaissance airplanes, there are U.K. aircraft, there are Turkish aircraft that are involved in this. We then go into northern Iraq. A typical mission may be 3 hours long, and then another hour back home.

Now, this is all done in support of our national policy, and what I am about to say is in no way intended to say that we have it wrong, or that we cannot support it, but I also want to get the facts on the record.

Let me give you an example of last year. In 2000 we flew in the north about 7,500 sorties. Now, this is not without risk, Mr. Chairman. I know you know that, but over 250 times last year our people were fired at that we know of.

We responded over 60 times. That is more than once a week, and I might add that we are flying a lot of single-engine aircraft over northern Iraq. We have been doing that for a long time, and if the law of averages caught up with us, we should have had engine failure by now.

We willingly accept that risk, but I just want to point out to the committee that it is not a risk-free operation that our men and women are carrying out in Operation Northern Watch.

Next I would like to talk about Bosnia for a moment. We have had an operation ongoing, a NATO operation in Bosnia. Sometimes people do not realize the progress that has been made. In 1996, when we went into Bosnia, as you see on the blue bar on that chart we had 60,000 forces that went into Bosnia. Those forces depicted in red are the U.S. forces. That was 20,000. We were 33 percent of the force in 1996.

Based on the improved conditions on the ground, and in consultation with our NATO allies, we were able to draw that force down, and as you notice today, we are just right at 20,000. The U.S. has just a tad over 4,000. We are about 20 percent of the force. I got approval from NATO, supported by the administration, just in the last couple of weeks, to make a further reduction in those forces. I think here in a few months we will be down to probably 3,500 Americans. We will be about 18 percent of the force.

So I think that chart dramatically shows the progress that we are making in terms of not only the conditions on the ground that allowed that, but in the drawdown of the forces.

Let me talk for a moment about Kosovo.

Chairman WARNER. Before you leave that subject, is it your professional judgment that that force level, be it ours or the combined force levels, is still essential to reach the goals that the United Nations and ourselves and our allies have set? That is where we fall into problems here. We put our troops somewhere, and then we are distracted, or go look at other situations. That situation in Bosnia

Albanian extremists. We need to encourage the Macedonian Government to give political access to all their citizens, and I do believe that we can bilaterally, the nations can help the Government of Macedonia. They can help them diplomatically, politically, economically, and we in NATO and in the Kosovo force need to do our part inside Kosovo to make sure that there are not armed extremists coming from Kosovo into Macedonia. We can talk more about that in detail in the closed session.

Chairman WARNER. The Secretary-General said he needed 1,400 additional troops. Now, could you speak to your military judgment as to that request, and most specifically, how it would affect the U.S. and our U.S. response? As a participant we wish to bear our share of the burdens and the risks in this operation.

General RALSTON. Yes, sir. Unfortunately, if I could say this, when the Secretary-General made his comments it was in a news conference that was associated with Macedonia. In fact, the two battalions that we asked for several weeks ago are to replace some Portuguese troops that are leaving. They have not left yet, but two companies to do that, and for some of the activities there.

Now, some of the nations have come forward and said that they will provide additional troops to back-fill. My judgment right now is, we do not need additional American forces. I think we are carrying our proper share of that at this time, and I think we are going to be OK.

Now, what we have done, we have taken forces out of that 37,000 that are in Kosovo, and we have moved more forces down to the border to do a more effective job of patrolling the border.

Mr. Chairman, I would also like to point out that this is an enormously difficult border to police. It is very mountainous terrain. It is wooded. There are trails that have gone back and forth across for centuries. The people there do not know there is a border there. I mean, they have brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts that live on either side of that. They have traded back and forth for centuries, and so it is enormously difficult to seal that border. I think that would be a mistake for us to set that as the goal, or the mission.

Now, we can do, I think, a good job of making sure that there are not armed extremists that are going back and forth, and that is what we should be concentrating on from a NATO perspective on our side of the border.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to spend a moment talking about Africa. We have significant problems in Africa in terms of economic, political, humanitarian issues. We are working with many of the countries in Africa to address this. We have just recently trained two battalions of the Nigerian Army for their further employment in Sierra Leone. We are about to undertake training a Ghana battalion in Ghana, and a Senegalese battalion in Senegal, and then the plan is to go back and train some additional Nigerian battalions.

This is, I think, a proper role for us to try to help the African nations deal with the problems that they have there. I do not want anyone on the committee to be surprised if you hear that we have American soldiers in Ghana, or Senegal, or Nigeria. What they are