Police Swoop on Rebels Threatens Macedonia Peace Posted November 11, 2001
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Sunday November 11 9:32 PM ET
Police Swoop on Rebels Threatens Macedonia Peace
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia's peace settlement was on the verge of unravelling on Monday after special forces arrested demobilised guerrillas despite an amnesty vow, igniting clashes that killed three police troops.
The cabinet met at midnight to tackle a crisis that diplomats said was caused by nationalist hard-liners opposed to
civil rights reforms promised to minority Albanians after rebels disbanded under the peace pact.
``This adventure will cost us a lot,'' moderate Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski, who kept the regular army out of the fray, said grimly to reporters as he entered the meeting, which included EU special envoy Alain le Roy.
It was the first serious violence between security forces and former guerrillas since the peace agreement was signed and the cease-fire took effect three months ago.
A belated milestone session of parliament set for Monday to ratify 15 constitutional amendments after weeks of cajoling by European Union (news - web sites) peace sponsors was canceled on Sunday just as special forces units crossed unguarded truce lines.
Ultra-nationalist Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski sent them in ostensibly to secure a ``mass grave'' site said to contain the bodies of executed Macedonians, but they also arrested former guerrillas despite a government commitment to amnesty.
Hours later, 16 Macedonian civilians were taken hostage by Albanian gunmen who stopped their cars as they drove through a mainly ethnic Albanian village not far from the suspected grave site, police sources told Reuters.
Three of the hostages -- two women and a young girl -- were freed late on Sunday night, Boskovski said. The others were being held with the apparent intention of exchanging them for the arrested Albanians.
Boskovski said three members of the Macedonian security forces ``on patrol'' near the mass grave site outside the northwestern village of Trebos were killed in an ambush by ethnic Albanian ``terrorists'' firing rockets.
He said the clashes abated early on Monday morning but he was prepared for more fighting in pursuit of his plan to start exhuming the reputed mass grave later on Monday.
``FIGHT BACK FIERCELY''
``With this (Monday night clashes), Macedonia has been attacked one more time and we have to fight back fiercely,'' the mercurial rightist told reporters.
``Macedonia is a sovereign state and we cannot have the attitude of a protectorate,'' he said in a shot at Western peace overseers, deeply resented by many Macedonians for pushing Skopje into concessions for peace with ``terrorists'' and restraining the government from swiftly reoccupying territory.
Parliament's agenda for ratifying constitutional changes was wrecked largely by media allegations that 13 Macedonian men previously reported to be held prisoner by guerrillas had been executed and buried in one or more mass graves near Trebos.
Boskovski rejected any responsibility for the violence. He said police action to secure the ``mass grave'' site was coordinated with Western peace monitors, but they denied this. ''The situation's very difficult,'' was all le Roy would say.
Special forces clad in fatigues and flak jackets rode armored vehicles to the area of the ``grave'' site, where they arrested seven alleged former insurgents in a lightning operation partly witnessed by a Reuters news team.
In another step EU and U.S. envoys feared could be explosive, Boskovski said 24-hour police patrols would begin on Monday in five villages in former insurgent territory, even though an amnesty was not in force.
Diplomats suspected that Boskovski's moves, defying an agreed procedure for coordination with NATO (news - web sites), OSCE (news - web sites) and European Union liaison teams, were aimed at provoking violence by former guerrillas to sink reforms in parliament.
OFFER TO HELP REJECTED
``OSCE, NATO and EU offered in our meetings with government leaders this weekend to help secure the grave site if the undertaking was done in a non-confrontational matter but they rejected it and chose to act unilaterally,'' one worried Western envoy said on Sunday night.
Gunfire crackled around villages where former guerrillas, their families and supporters had been edgily awaiting an amnesty and ratification of reforms deemed crucial to preventing a violent partition of Macedonia.
Macedonia's main highway linking Skopje with Tetovo and Gostivar, two heavily Albanian cities skirting the mountainous rebel heartland, came under ``terrorist gunfire'' late in the evening, the state news agency MIA said.
A Reuters news team looking for the grave site in the afternoon found police troops taking up positions on a dirt road between farm plots and pointing machineguns at two Albanians stretched face down on the ground.
An Interior Ministry statement said seven ethnic Albanians had been arrested near Trebos for offences including ``ethnic cleansing,'' the abduction of Macedonian civilians and an assault on a police station.
Gunmen Seize Hostages in Macedonia Posted November 11, 2001
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Sunday November 11 6:39 PM ET
Gunmen Seize Hostages in Macedonia
By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Gunmen were holding dozens of people hostage in a small village in northwestern Macedonia on Sunday, further escalating tensions in the volatile Balkan country.
Meanwhile, three officers were wounded in an ambush outside the village, police said, but it was unclear whether the incident was related to the hostage situation.
As many as 70 people were taken captive after the armed group entered the ethnically mixed village of Semsovo, 5 miles northeast of Tetovo, Goran Mitevski, a senior police official, told Skopje's Telma TV.
Earlier in the day, 15 others were abducted along the main road in the region, including the director of a local Macedonian-language station in Tetovo and the town's police chief, police said.
Little more was known about the incidents northeast of Tetovo, a predominantly Albanian city, but a NATO (news - web sites) official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed both incidents.
NATO has not taken a role yet in securing the release of the hostages, NATO spokesman Craig Ratcliff told The Associated Press. He would only confirm the 15 abductions.
``We're monitoring the situation,'' Ratcliff said. ``The international community is very concerned about this, but for now it's an internal issue.''
Among those kidnapped were Zlate Todorovski, director of a Macedonian-language TV station in Tetovo, and Police Chief Zemri Qamili, police told The AP on condition of anonymity.
A former ethnic Albanian rebel commander told the AP that the disbanded group, the National Liberation Army, was not involved in kidnappings.
``It has to be clear that the former NLA has nothing to do with this,'' he said on condition of anonymity. ``This is an act of irresponsible people who want to destabilize the situation.''
Tetovo, Macedonia's second-largest city, has been at the center of this country's crisis since fighting broke out in February. Ethnic Albanian rebels had said they were fighting for more rights, but disbanded in August under a peace plan aimed at calming tensions here.
The incident is likely to fuel outrage in Macedonia, beset with uncertainty in the months since the Aug. 13 accord was signed.
Bickering in the country's Parliament stalled the plan and prevented it from going fully into effect, prompting both the Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians to each claim the other was acting in bad faith.
Sunday's incident came after dozens of Macedonian policemen, equipped with armored personnel carriers, secured an area surrounding a site believed to contain the bodies of six Macedonians allegedly abducted by ethnic Albanian militants earlier this year.
Macedonia's hard-line interior minister, Ljube Boskoski, announced that exhumation at the burial site would start early next week. He did not disclose the exact location.
Meanwhile, seven ethnic Albanians were arrested after police found two assault rifles and five handguns in a vehicle at a checkpoint near Tetovo, police said.
Earlier, a former rebel commander said the weapons found on a tractor had ``nothing to do with us,'' suggesting there might be some ``splinter groups in the area ready to cause trouble.''
Macedonian army and police reported several shootings in the wider Tetovo area and in the Kumanovo region late Saturday and early Sunday.
Macedonia Peace Process Lurches Into Crisis Posted November 11, 2001
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Sunday November 11 4:33 PM ET
Macedonia Peace Process Lurches Into Crisis
By Mark Heinrich
TREBOS, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonia's peace process lurched into crisis on Sunday when security forces entered ex-rebel territory to secure a ``mass grave'' and seized ethnic Albanians for wartime offences and arms possession.
Hours later, at least 12 Macedonian civilians were taken hostage by armed men who stopped their cars as they were passing through a mainly ethnic Albanian village not far from the suspected grave site, police sources told Reuters.
``There is shooting in the vicinity,'' one source said.
The Macedonian nationalist speaker of parliament canceled a landmark session set for Monday to ratify civil rights reforms promised to minority Albanians after their guerrilla movement disbanded under NATO (news - web sites) supervision.
A Reuters news team looking for the alleged grave site came upon heavily armed special police taking up positions along a dirt road between farm plots and pointing sub-machineguns at two Albanian men stretched face down on the ground.
Extremely tense, the special troops clad in fatigues and flak jackets levelled automatic weapons at the reporters, ordered them to put hands up and get out of the car before letting them proceed after a search and document check.
``There are armed Albanians in the vicinity and we thought you were among them. We have the job to secure this area,'' the commander of the unit told Reuters.
A special policeman prodded the head of one of the prone ethnic Albanians with his boot for several seconds. The detainees' car, which had no number plates, was to one side.
Police sources said seven ethnic Albanians had been arrested near the alleged grave outside the village of Trebos for possessing automatic weapons as well as for suspected attacks on Macedonian civilians during the seven-month conflict.
Western sponsors of an August peace deal were alarmed when the rightist interior minister announced police would start excavating the suspected grave on Monday in an area inhabited by edgy ex-guerrillas before MPs had ratified the reforms.
SPECTRE OF RELAPSE INTO VIOLENCE
The move by Ljube Boskovski, a combative hard-liner who proposed the peace accord, raised concern about violence between police and demobilised rebels angry over a lack of amnesty promised by the government under the peace plan.
An aide to President Boris Trajkovski, a relative moderate, said he had endorsed Boskovski's plan.
``Macedonia is a sovereign state and we cannot have the attitude of a protectorate,'' Boskovski said in a shot at Western peace overseers deeply resented by many Macedonians for pushing the government into concessions for peace with rebels.
Macedonian media have run a series of unsubstantiated stories this month saying 13 Macedonian men they previously reported to be held prisoner by guerrillas had been executed and thrown into one or more mass graves near Trebos.
In another step peace sponsors feared would be provocative, Boskovski said 24-hour police patrols with powers of arrest would begin on Monday in five pilot villages in ex-insurgent territory, even though an amnesty was not in force.
Western diplomats suspected Boskovski's moves, defying an agreed procedure for coordination with NATO, OSCE (news - web sites) and EU liaison teams, was aimed at provoking violence by ex-guerrillas to halt adoption of reforms at the last minute.
``OSCE, NATO and EU offered in our meetings with Trajkovski and Boskovski this weekend to assist in securing the grave site if the undertaking was done in a non-confrontational matter but they rejected it and chose to act unilaterally,'' one worried Western envoy said on Sunday night.
Parliamentary speaker Stojan Andov said the assembly would not vote until one of two main ethnic Albanian parties whose leaders co-signed the peace accord dropped its opposition to slight dilutions of two constitutional amendments.
The overall two-thirds margin -- 81 votes -- needed to amend the constitution can be mustered alone by the two largest Macedonian parties and the ethnic Albanian DPA party who have grudgingly settled differences over preamble rewording.
Politicized Media Scramble Macedonia Peace Process Posted November 7, 2001
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Wednesday November 7 12:30 PM ET
Politicized Media Scramble Macedonia Peace Process
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE, Macedonia (Reuters) - When Macedonia's government decided under diplomatic pressure to withdraw a trigger-happy paramilitary squad from a cease-fire zone, eminent newspaper editors lay down in the road to prevent the pullout.
The editors had championed the paramilitaries as guardians of Macedonian villagers against ``Albanian terrorists'' who were supposedly evading a NATO (news - web sites)-sponsored disarmament scheme.
The media men ignored the findings of international monitors that the paramilitaries had fired repeatedly into ethnic Albanian villages at night without provocation, despite the truce.
After some hours, the editors gave up their protest and the rogue gunmen left. But the episode evoked how media have moved from observer to participant in Macedonia's ethnic strife, plaguing efforts to cement a Western-brokered peace accord.
Newspapers stirred up scorn for the NATO operation that collected almost 4,000 weapons from the now disbanded National Liberation Army, or NLA, by rallying readers to deposit piles of junk at alliance headquarters in the capital Skopje.
They have retailed rumor and disinformation, casting doubt on the peace option, saying NATO airlifted guns to guerrillas during the fighting and that the guerrillas were agents of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
Last month, the best-selling daily ambushed the start of a parliamentary session to ratify civil rights reforms required by the peace accord by giving prominence to an unsubstantiated story saying 12 Macedonians, earlier said to be prisoners, had been massacred by ``Albanian terrorists'' and thrown in a mass grave.
DIET OF DISTORTION
Much of the media is nominally independent but co-opted for propaganda purposes as they cannot survive on self-generating revenue. They toe the line of ruling ethnic nationalists hostile to the peace plan for a civic democracy, experts say.
``Many Macedonians don't know what this peace agreement is all about because they're fed lies and distortions from their press. It's a legacy of communism and unprofessional politics,'' said an official in the international peace mission.
``There's no censorship but no real independence either because the financial backers are mainly political players or their cronies. He who pays the piper calls the tune,'' he said.
``Tradition here is that journalists tend to double as politicians. That makes it easy for figures in the ruling parties to exert pressure on the media,'' said Violeta Gligoroska, analyst for the U.S.-funded Open Society Institute.
Journalists in the former Yugoslav republic rebuff international criticism as misplaced and hypocritical.
They say Macedonia was victimized by ethnic Albanian expansionism exported from Kosovo, where separatists threw off brutal Serbian rule with the help of NATO bombing in 1999.
NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo, they say, failed to prevent guerrillas and guns crossing the border to foment insurrection in Macedonia, then their governments arm-twisted Skopje into granting better rights to ``terrorists.''
``The internationals just did a copy paste on what happened in Kosovo. 'The Slavs are bad, the Albanians are good. Executioners against victims','' Saso Colakovski, a senior editor at another main daily, Utrinski Vesnik, told Reuters.
``They (former guerrillas) are used to being media stars and favored pets of the international public,'' Branko Geroski, editor in chief of the daily Dnevnik which broke the ``mass grave'' story, railed in a front-page editorial on October 27.
``Now the world can be given the most convincing proof that Macedonia in this war is not fighting with fighters for human rights but with common bandits, drug dealers and murderers. Their activities cannot be called anything else but terrorism.''
WAR-LIKE RHETORIC PERSISTS
Zlatko Dizdarevic, a prominent commentator on Balkan human rights and media issues, said he was struck by how the language of war still prevails well after the peace accord was signed.
``To open a newspaper is to be confronted with unadulterated bile. It's doubly ironic this is happening in a town chock-full of international (agencies) and foreign NGOs who have poured money into training independent journalists, trying to counter a culture of propaganda,'' he wrote in the Balkan Crisis Report.
Macedonian journalism did not gain critical distance from the state after communism fell in 1991 because private media outlets proliferated beyond what the tiny market could bear, preserving a tradition of political dependence in ownership.
A country of just 2 million people now has more than 100 private TV and radio stations, four private and two state-owned nationwide newspapers plus many weeklies and monthlies.
Virtually all leading media across ethnic lines are run at least indirectly by political parties or their financiers.
``There is a typical post-socialist tendency to prescribe truthfulness,'' said Mark Thompson, who chronicled how ethnic vitriol spread by party-aligned media kindled Yugoslavia's bloody breakup in his book ``Forging War.''
Hence, every shot heard in cease-fire zones winds up in the Macedonian media as a ``provocation'' or ``attack'' by ``Albanian terrorists.'' NATO monitors say almost all ``incidents'' boil down to celebratory or drunken gunplay common in former Yugoslavia.
Newspapers said flatly that rebels with beards were foreign ''mujahideen,'' proof that bin Laden had masterminded the NLA in a conspiracy to impose Islamic fundamentalism in the Balkans.
NATO observers said repeatedly the hirsute fighters were merely Albanians from the hills who had not shaved, and that no mujahideen had been seen. Local media took no notice.
Information attributed to international officials has been invented at times to persuade readers that ``terrorists'' have been ``appeased'' and national sovereignty trampled by the West.
NATO's spokesman was quoted in a newspaper interview as saying its troops, who now protect monitors trying to heal ethnic divisions, on the ground were doing no good in Macedonia. He issued a statement denying giving the remark or interview.
NATO Says Macedonia OKs Clear Amnesty for Rebels Posted November 7, 2001
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Wednesday November 7 3:35 PM ET
NATO Says Macedonia OKs Clear Amnesty for Rebels
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE (Reuters) - NATO (news - web sites) Secretary General George Robertson said on Wednesday Macedonia had promised to clarify a promised amnesty for disbanded guerrillas to show only those indictable by the U.N. war crimes tribunal would face arrest.
If honored, the move would do much to sustain a troubled August peace agreement with rebel minority Albanians. Hardline security services seeking vengeance rather than reconciliation with the rebels have blocked a broad amnesty, raising tensions.
An amnesty decree issued on October 8 was ambiguous on what constitutes a war crime, putting ex-insurgents who still have weapons on edge as police resumed limited patrols nearby.
With parliament planning to vote on Monday on civil rights reforms benefiting ethnic Albanians after six weeks of delay, Robertson came to town to tie up a critical loose end of the peace pact -- the amnesty.
He emerged from six hours of talks with Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders saying the government had pledged to exchange letters with NATO assuring that any prosecutions would be left to or approved by the tribunal.
Robertson, handling the issue because National Liberation Army (NLA) rebels invested their trust in NATO to obtain an amnesty after they disbanded, said the fine print had to be finalized but at least one key points was agreed on Wednesday.
There would be no more arrests without the tribunal's oversight, Robertson told reporters.
The status of 224 rebels jailed or sought on murky ''terrorism'' or arms possession charges levied before the August 13 peace settlement remained in doubt. But they should be pardoned if not subject to tribunal investigation.
``There will be no further local war crimes indictments. The issue of such crimes will be dealt by the ICTY (war crimes tribunal) and all information or evidence relating to such incidents or such allegations will be sent to the ICTY,'' Robertson said.
There was no comment from the prime minister and interior minister, top power brokers on security matters with whom Robertson met at length. Both are nationalists convinced that Albanians harbor a long-term agenda to carve up Macedonia.
FENCE-MENDING CRUCIAL
``There has to be an amnesty in order to heal the wounds in this divided country,'' Robertson added.
Ex-guerrilla commander Ali Ahmeti, who took the risky step of ordering his forces to disband and -- diplomats say -- has been a moderating influence on his nervous men since then, is among the 224 under indictment.
On his arrival, Robertson warned the government that any further delays in ratifying the 15 equal rights amendments to the constitution stipulated by the peace settlement and issuing a credible amnesty could reignite fighting.
``The agreement is now six weeks overdue for ratification in parliament. That means there are sizeable, real risks of a return to violence. Inevitably there is going to be...violence if the parliamentary process is not concluded (promptly),'' he said.
Efforts to implement the Western-engineered blueprint for defusing a seven-month guerrilla uprising have been obstructed by nationalist point-scoring, diversionary tactics and inflammatory disinformation in the pliant Macedonian media.
Key obstacles were apparently cleared last month when European Union (news - web sites) shuttle diplomacy overcame Macedonian-Albanian rows over emotive sovereignty issues in some draft amendments.
But Albanian MPs, unhappy with dilutions to two equal-rights amendments made at Macedonian insistence, could withhold their support unless they get assurances that demobilized guerrillas will receive amnesty as promised.
(Additional reporting by Kole Casule)
NATO Urges Macedonia to Ratify Deal Posted November 7, 2001
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Tuesday November 6 11:46 AM ET
NATO Urges Macedonia to Ratify Deal
By MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO (news - web sites) urged Macedonia's deeply divided politicians Tuesday to ratify a Western-designed peace plan and announced that the organization's top official would come to Skopje to push for such a move.
``We ask members of the parliament to take the responsibility to the people they represent,'' NATO spokesman Craig Ratcliff said. He said NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson will meet Wednesday with top officials in the Macedonian capital.
The accord, signed Aug. 13 by the four main political parties in Macedonia, is yet to be implemented because Parliament has failed to approve the 15 constitutional amendments that grant broader rights to restive ethnic Albanians, a requirement under the peace plan.
The lawmakers remain split over an amendment that defines what communities form Macedonia.
The existing proposal, mediated by European Union (news - web sites) upon insistence by Macedonians, defines Macedonia as a country of ``all citizens ... the Macedonian people as well as citizens living within its borders, who are part of the Albanian people,'' and others.
But a key ethnic Albanian party that signed the accord has demanded a revision of the draft, saying it still suggests dominance by Macedonians. The remaining three parties hold enough seats to enact all 15 amendments but broad consensus is considered essential for a lasting peace.
With original deadlines for implementation of the peace pact long past, there are fears violence could erupt again along front lines that have been mostly quiet since the August signing.
Macedonian government forces are not expected to retake control of the volatile, ethnic Albanian-populated regions in the northwest before the whole peace package is approved. Ethnic Albanian militants have handed over some 4,000 weapons, but still exercise control in the contested areas.
Government spokesman Gjorgji Trendafilov on Tuesday cited intelligence reports showing that ``ethnic Albanian militants are preparing new actions in the coming winter months'' in the country's northwest.
He also claimed that an unspecified number of guerrillas have again crossed into Macedonia from neighboring Kosovo, a province of Serbia dominated by ethnic Albanians. Kosovo had served as a key staging area for insurgents in Macedonia.
The former rebels also expect a firm assurance that they will be pardoned for taking part in the insurgency that began in February. Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski has made only a general, nonbinding pledge of amnesty.
``NATO would like to see amnesty approved,'' Ratcliff said, alluding to calls for a formal amnesty law.
The rebels argued that they were fighting for broader rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up a third of the country's 2 million people. Most Macedonians say the militants' true aim was to carve off ethnic Albanian-populated parts of the country.
NATO Chief Says No Macedonia Peace Without Reform Posted November 7, 2001
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Wednesday November 7 9:19 AM ET
NATO Chief Says No Macedonia Peace Without Reform
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE (Reuters) - The head of NATO (news - web sites) warned Macedonia Wednesday it faced a relapse into ethnic fighting unless it quickly enacted civil rights reforms and amnestied guerrillas who have demobilized under a peace agreement.
Efforts to implement the Western-engineered plan devised to end an uprising by rebels from the Albanian minority have been plagued by nationalist point-scoring, sidetracking and disinformation.
However, there is new momentum toward ratifying the accord in parliament, and NATO Secretary General George Robertson arrived in Skopje hoping to capitalize on it.
``The (peace) agreement is now six weeks overdue for ratification in parliament. That means there are sizable, real risks of a return to violence,'' he told reporters before entering talks with Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders.
``Inevitably there is going to be a rise in violence if the parliamentary process is not concluded.''
European Union (news - web sites) shuttle diplomacy last month seemed to settle Macedonian-Albanian disputes over emotive sovereignty issues in some of the 15 constitutional amendments on the agenda. Parliament has set a ratification vote for November 12.
ASSURANCES NEEDED
But Albanian MPs, unhappy with dilutions to two equal-rights amendments made at Macedonian insistence, could withhold their support unless they get assurances that demobilized guerrillas will be amnestied as promised.
The parliamentary delays, the lack of an amnesty, a government arms buying drive and pointed displays on television of new firepower and special forces have made ex-guerrillas nervous and suspicious.
Many of the ex-insurgents are stewing in dead-end, half-destroyed highland villages or across the border in Kosovo, unable to resume jobs or an education in the cities for fear of arrest at police checkpoints on the way.
Although rebels handed thousands of weapons in to NATO under the peace agreement, gunfire still clatters near truce lines after dark, though Western monitors say it has been aimed at no one so far.
The threat of renewed fighting comes both from militant Albanian separatists exploiting broader feelings of betrayal and from Macedonian rightist hawks who oppose the civic democracy envisaged by the peace plan and may count on further delays to provoke Albanian violence and justify a new military offensive.
Tensions have been fanned by a grab bag of Macedonian gambits to stall reforms -- diverting attention to issues such as alleged mass graves, or planting media rumors saying rebels are rearming for war, as the top daily reported Wednesday.
DEFINING WAR CRIMES
Robertson's main priority Wednesday was to pin the government down on a strict, clear definition of war crimes echoing that of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), whose jurisdiction takes legal precedence.
In signing the peace accord, President Boris Trajkovski committed the government to pardoning all guerrillas who voluntarily disarmed and were not indictable by the tribunal.
But an amnesty decree issued by the cabinet on October 8 was full of loopholes, with ambiguous references to what constitutes a war crime, and had no impact.
Fearing a popular backlash at elections due in January, the nationalists who make up parliament's largest faction have balked at putting an amnesty into law.
The Interior Ministry, a hotbed of anti-treaty sentiment, is prosecuting 224 ex-rebels and dozens are believed to be in jail on murky charges of ``terrorism'' or weapons possession.
Former guerrilla commander Ali Ahmeti and 10 top associates face domestic ``war crimes'' charges which they have denied and for which Western diplomats believe there is no hard evidence.
``Robertson will follow up on a letter we handed to the government last week advising that the only exceptions to the amnesty should be defined as crimes covered by and processed by the tribunal,'' a European diplomat said.
New threats to peace deal as Macedonian deputies resume debate Posted November 2, 2001
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Friday November 2, 2:55 AM
New threats to peace deal as Macedonian deputies resume debate
The Macedonian parliament resumed debate on political reforms crucial to a Western-brokered accord that ended a rebel insurgency, amid new threats from deputies to boycott the long-delayed session and stall the peace process.
Parliament speaker Stojan Andov threatened to block the final vote on a new constitution unless an ethnic Albanian party drops its opposition to a key amendment.
The deputies met for the second day of a stalled debate which is to conclude with a vote on a new constitution envisaged under a peace accord signed in August.
Under the accord, the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) agreed to end a seven-month-old insurgency and handed in almost 4,000 weapons to NATO troops in exchange for the promised reforms, which would boost the rights of the large ethnic Albanian minority in the former Yugoslav republic.
But the 15 constitutional amendments have been stalled in parliament.
EU foreign policy chief Solana announced in Skopje last week that political leaders had decided to resume the debate on the reforms following an agreement on a revised wording to the constitution's preamble, the most controversial of the amendments.
At the start of Thursday's proceedings, legislators from the main Macedonian nationalist party, the VMRO-DPMNE, threatened to boycott the session because of recent incidents in former rebel-held zones.
The head of the party's parliamentary group, Cedomir Kraljevski, threatened to "send a message to the international community that it had failed to effectively carry out its mission" to supervise a return to normality in the former conflict zones in the north of the country.
Police have noted an increase of shooting incidents in recent days around the flashpoint northwestern town of Tetovo, which authorities have blamed on former rebels of the officially disbanded NLA.
For their part, ethnic Albanian parties, as well as Western envoys, have called for a clear commitment by the government to implement a promised amnesty for the rebels.
Despite the disputes, Andov said he hoped for "a vote on the amendments to the constitution by November 8," followed several days later by the declaration of a new constitution in the presence of European envoys, "so that they can show their commitment to support Macedonia economically."
But Andov, a hardline Macedonian nationalist, warned before Thursday's debate that he would "block the vote on all the amendments" if the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) continued to oppose a revised version of the preamble to the constitution.
The new text has been accepted by the three other parties -- two Macedonian and one ethnic Albanian -- who signed the peace accord.
PDP Vice President Naser Ziberi said Andov's statement threatened to spark "a new crisis in Macedonia."
Under the accord, all references to ethnicity were to be erased from the preamble. But the text had to be rewritten to satisfy Macedonian nationalists in parliament, who insisted the preamble maintain the reference to the "Macedonian people".
The compromise version refers to ethnic Albanians and other minorities living in Macedonia as "peoples" and not as ethnic minorities, but lists them separately from the "Macedonian people".
The NLA launched its insurgency in February in a bid to secure improved rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up almost one third of the country's two million people.
Macedonia: Church Rage Over Political Reforms Posted October 31, 2001
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Macedonia: Church Rage Over Political Reforms
The Macedonian Orthodox Church is battling with politicians to retain its primacy over other religions in the constitution.
By Gordana Stojanovska Icevska in Skopje. (BCR No. 292, 31-October-01)
At the top of Vodno mountain, an 86-metre high cross is being constructed complete with an elevator to carry people aloft for breathtaking views over Skopje.
The project is costing 2.7 million German marks, the greater part of which has been donated by the government, at a time when the country's finances are in such dire shape that it cannot afford to help thousands of people left homeless by months of ethnic conflict. The donation illustrated the government's reluctance to cross swords with the Macedonian Orthodox Church, which is now threatening to blacklist politicians who support proposals to reduce clerical authority in the country's constitution.
At the meeting that decided on the cross donation, the government concluded help for those left destitute by the conflict would have to come from international humanitarian organisations.
Macedonia faces a shortfall of 76 million US dollars in its international balance of payments and is now preparing for a donors' conference to seek funding to repair the wreckage of war. Meanwhile, assistance would be limited to patching up holes in the roofs of damaged houses before the snows fall.
Opponents of the government's two million mark cross donation conceded that it was a small sum compared with the huge amounts needed for helping the homeless. But they argued that repairing even a few hundred roofs would have been better than raising this monument.
The Church accepted the donation with glee. Right after it was announced, top clergymen and government leaders headed by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski went to the top of Vodno to inspect the site.
Government officials had good reason to appease the powerful Church, as it has plunged vigorously into battle against constitutional changes proposed as part of a peace settlement to improve the lot of Macedonia's Albanian minority.
The Framework Peace Agreement, signed in Ohrid on August 13, stipulated that Article 19 of the constitution should be amended to give other religions parity with the Orthodox Church.
Church leaders flew into a rage and demanded that Article 19 be put back the way it was, warning that politicians who refused to cooperate would be placed on a blacklist. "The names of deputies who vote for the proposed changes will be publicly announced at all Orthodox churches," declared the Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia, His Beatitude Stefan, at the October 11 meeting on top of Vodno.
Such a move would stigmatise deputies who supported the changes as traitors of the Macedonian people and the Church. "The Church does not interfere with politics but it is forced to defend its dignity, status, position and role in the constitution, even by publicly humiliating treacherous deputies," said the Synod spokesman, His Holiness Timotej.
According to Timotej, this humiliation would be a relatively mild punishment. Unofficially, IWPR knows that some clergymen wanted offending parliamentarians kicked out of the Church, leaving them without rights to any religious ritual.
Some clergymen say they are ashamed of this blatant intrusion into politics, arguing that nobody should be punished for holding an independent view. But Church leaders continue their energetic campaign which has already showed signs of bearing fruit.
This was demonstrated after the recent visit to Skopje by Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, to discuss changes in the constitution. After Solana left, the government announced that it had watered down proposed constitutional changes so that Article 19 would give prior mention to the Orthodox Church with Islam and the others tacked on in a subordinate position.
The Church has not stated its official position towards the new version of Article 19. But His Holiness Petar said it does not meet the Church's demands. "The proposal gives an unrealistic image of the Church in the Constitution," he said.
Petar argued that all the other religious communities have churches in their countries of origin and the country of origin for the Macedonian Orthodox Church is Macedonia, therefore it alone should be listed in the constitution.
Critics of the Church say it has become too preoccupied with preserving its status, at the expense of the needs of its followers. They say that right through the conflict the Church did nothing for ordinary people while clergymen continued to drive around in luxury cars and live in resplendent homes.
The Church may force its way back into the constitution. But, critics say, it might lose its place in the hearts of the people.
Gordana Stojanovska Icevska is the deputy editor-in-chief of Skopje based weekly Kapital.
NATO Says Macedonia Reform Delay May Breed Unrest Posted October 24, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011024/wl/macedonia_nato_robertson_dc_1.html
Wednesday October 24 6:01 PM ET
NATO Says Macedonia Reform Delay May Breed Unrest
LISBON, Portugal (Reuters) - Mounting frustration caused by the Macedonian parliament's delay in adopting overdue reforms could breed violence in the former Yugoslav republic, NATO (news - web sites) Secretary-General George Robertson said Wednesday.
A peace pact signed on Aug. 13 required the Macedonian parliament to pass a series of constitutional amendments within 45 days to enhance the civic rights of the ethnic Albanian minority, in return for disarmament by Albanian guerrillas.
But weeks of filibustering and walkouts have bogged the process down and a session due to begin ratifying reforms collapsed Wednesday.
``Clearly there is frustration growing and that frustration could easily spill over into violence,'' Robertson said during an official visit to Portugal, a member of the 19-country NATO alliance.
``Today they will have in front of them enough business to concentrate their minds, and I expect them to deliver what was a solemn undertaking made by the leaders of the political parties,'' he added.
Nationalist legislators have balked at granting equal rights to the large Albanian majority which has a higher birthrate and, many Macedonians believe, separatist ambitions.
Macedonian legislators are also insisting on tinkering with the proposals and passing them one by one, while ethnic Albanian counterparts have demanded no changes and all reforms to be enacted in one package.
Robertson said he hoped the parliament would ``keep to its side of what was a very clear bargain, a very clear deal.''
In a separate visit to Lisbon Monday, Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva predicted the reform package could be completed by the end of October.
``The parliamentary procedure is, yes, a little bit delayed because we had a public debate on the amendments. ... I think that we could end the parliamentary procedure by the end of this month,'' Mitreva said.
Macedonian Police Return Cautiously to Rebel Territory Posted October 23, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36553-2001Oct22.html
Macedonian Police Return Cautiously to Rebel Territory
By Nicholas Wood
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, October 23, 2001; Page A19
TEARCE, Macedonia, Oct. 22 -- Police in Macedonia today began a slow and cautious return to land formerly held by ethnic Albanian rebels, a move that further cements a peace process that few people in the tiny Balkan country thought would go as far as it has.
Patrols drove into Tearce and four other villages in northern Macedonia, some of which were the scene of fierce fighting this summer between government security forces and the National Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian group behind a seven-month guerrilla insurgency.
Outnumbered in some cases by reporters and local political leaders, today's patrols spent just under three hours in each village. In an attempt to forestall ethnic Albanian resistance, the patrols included officers from both ethnic groups -- minority Albanians and majority Slavs -- and were escorted by international cease-fire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE.
Many Slav villagers appeared to welcome them, while some ethnic Albanians muttered that the police were returning too soon. Dimeo Kuzmanovski, the senior Slav officer, played down the officers' presence, promising there would be no attempt to arrest people or take "police actions."
There were no incidents while the police remained. But a bomb damaged a police station and municipal office in one of the villages late tonight after the officers left, a reminder of the fragility of the country's peace. One ethnic Albanian village leader said that the bomb, which caused no injuries, reflected Albanian unhappiness with the progress made by Slav leaders in changing the political system.
When ethnic Albanian guerrillas began firing on police stations in February, the United States and the European Union feared the outbreak of a new, full-scale Balkan war. They applied intense diplomatic pressure that helped produce a peace agreement on Aug. 13. In it, the government agreed to make political reforms addressing Albanian claims of second-class citizenship. In return, the rebel army turned in about 3,800 weapons and announced it had disbanded.
A special NATO force collected those weapons and has now left the country. It was replaced by a smaller, 700-member international force led by a German contingent and charged with protecting OSCE and EU officials monitoring the cease-fire.
The government has responded to the rebels' announced demobilization by granting amnesty to fighters who surrendered their weapons. Those who have committed war crimes are excluded from the amnesty.
Today's patrols were the first to return to former guerrilla-controlled territory since the signing of the peace agreement in the lakeside resort of Ohrid. Western diplomats called the visits proof that the two sides are making progress in implementing the deal.
"This shows that one of the most important points of the Ohrid agreement is being respected," said Craig Jenness, chief of mission for the OSCE in Macedonia, who accompanied police in Tearce. "We want to send a signal to whoever is opposed to the agreement that it is working."
Francois Leotard, the European Union's outgoing envoy to Macedonia and one of the Ohrid agreement's key facilitators, said implementation has been slow. But he added that "one has to remember that in June and July helicopters were bombarding a village eight kilometers [five miles] from the center of the capital, that almost a third of the country was closed off to the police and Macedonian army, and there was a risk of civil war. So in four months the situation has changed profoundly."
Much of the criticism by Western governments about the speed of implementation has focused on the Macedonian parliament. Until this week the agreement seemed bogged down, with legislators unable to agree on a timetable for a debate on political changes required under the peace deal, such as wider use of the Albanian language.
The EU showed its disappointment by postponing indefinitely a conference set for Oct. 15 and aimed at raising money to help repair war damage and boost the economy.
The speaker of the Macedonian parliament has since promised to put all of the required amendments to the constitution, 15 in all, before legislators by Friday.
While the assembly appears to have picked up speed, there is no guarantee the deal will be passed unaltered.
Many Slavs feel that the Ohrid agreement and the amnesty are being forced on them by the West. As Jordan Boskov, a member of parliament, said, "They have taken the guerrillas' side. . . . We have to accept so-called freedom fighters as citizens again."
Nato and EU leaders fly to Skopje to rebuke government Posted October 19, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,576740,00.html
Nato and EU leaders fly to Skopje to rebuke government
Nicholas Wood in Skopje
Friday October 19, 2001
The Guardian
Lord Robertson, the Nato secretary general, issued a stern warning to the Macedonian government yesterday, saying that the country risked a return to violence unless politicians pushed ahead with a western-brokered peace process.
His comments came during a visit to Skopje with the EU's foreign policy envoy, Javier Solana, to kick-start the passage of key reforms through the Macedonian parliament.
"We have done our part of the bargain; it is up to the others to deliver on their side of the bargain too," Lord Robertson said, referring to Nato's operation to help disarm ethnic Albanian rebels.
In the weeks since the rebel National Liberation Army was disbanded, not one amend ment to the constitution has been ratified by the parliament, as required by a peace deal signed by Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders in early August. A meeting between party leaders aimed at settling the row broke up on Wednesday without agreement.
EU officials have criticised some MPs for what they call a "piecemeal" approach to the debate. The main Albanian groups are boycotting the parliament unless all the accords are debated at the same time and passed unchanged.
EU and Nato officials agree that any changes could derail the accord that took weeks of negotiations to iron out. "This is a mature, grown-up country that wants to be a member of Nato and the EU and there are obligations that go along with that," Lord Robertson said.
But many Macedonian MPs want to see the reforms adapted before they become law. They are opposed in particular to changes to the status of the Macedonian people as an ethnic group. Many Macedonians believe that this is one of the main ways to maintain the state's ethnic identity, as the Albanian population is due to become the majority group within 30 years.
"They are going too far," said Jordan Boskov, a member of the largest Macedonian parliamentary group, the VMRO-DPMNE, referring to western demands to pass the accords unchanged. "They are interfering in our internal affairs. It is up to the president to forward proposals as he sees fit."
MACEDONIA: BOSKOVSKI THREATENS PEACE Posted October 19, 2001
http://www.iwpr.net
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 289, October 19, 2001
MACEDONIA: BOSKOVSKI THREATENS PEACE
Theatrical interior minister with shadowy past threatens Macedonian peace
process.
By Saso Ordanoski in Skopje
Frustrated moderates are finding it harder than expected to get rid of interior minister Ljube Boskovski, a political firebrand with a theatrical style who has emerged as a main stumbling block to the internationally-sponsored peace plan for Macedonia.
Sections of the Macedonian media have been demanding Boskovski's resignation because of his hard line views. But as a leading member of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party he enjoys solid political and popular support.
Prime Minister Ljupco Georgievski backs Boskovski who ranks high in public opinion polls, largely because of his fiery rhetoric during this year's conflict in which ethnic Albanians demanded improved rights from the Macedonian majority.
If Boskovski refuses to resign and the premier declines to dismiss him, it would take a parliamentary vote of no confidence to force him out. Because of the complex political balance in Macedonia, it is by no means certain that a majority of the 120 members of parliament would vote against him.
"Ljube Boskovski can be removed from his post only by popular referendum," Boskovski said in a half-joking, half-serious tone to this reporter. The third-person reference to himself was typical of Boskovski's theatre-like persona.
His speech employs a bizarre pathos characteristic of Balkan patriots and nationalists. It closely resembles the inflammatory Croatian oratory associated with the Tudjman era.
Boskovski, now 41, forged his political beliefs and hard line views in the late Eighties and early Nineties while working in Croatia. He owned a number of sweet shops - his opponents often refer to him as the "candy man".
While in Croatia, he devoted much of his time to strenuous opposition to perceived Serb domination of Yugoslavia. He fought on the Croat side in the Serbo-Croat war of the Nineties. Intelligence sources say Boskovski was trained as a Zenga, or member of Croatia's paramilitary forces, harassing and intimidating ethnic Serbs and Albanians along the Dalmatian coast.
These intelligence sources, drawing on information from a file on Boskovski compiled by Macedonian secret police, claim it was during this period that he was first engaged to work for the Croat secret service. There is no independent confirmation of this.
"Fighting against the Serb aggression in Croatia was a fight for the independence of Macedonia," Boskovski told me in an interview for the Skopje Forum magazine.
In the Nineties, he was a close associate and friend to some of the most powerful Croatian politicians from the Tudjman era, including Gojko Susak, Sime Dzodan, Marko Veselica, Dalibor Brozovic and others.
>From that period, too, dates his alleged friendship with Agim Ceku, former Yugoslav army officer and current chief of the Kosovo Protection Corp, a kind of provincial defence force made up of former KLA soldiers. Today, in the light of the Macedonian-Albanian conflict, Boskovski angrily denies any acquaintance with Ceku.
A couple of weeks ago, some media in Skopje were speculating that Boskovski was involved in illegal arms trading for Macedonian security forces. They published copies of faxed documents claiming Boskovski was paid one million German marks for his part in a deal with a well-known Bulgarian arms supplier.
At a press conference, Boskovski denied all these allegations. He stated that if any of it were true, he would "burn himself in the centre of Skopje as Jan Palach did in Prague". The minister was also connected in the press with some arms dealings with Croatia but no conclusive evidence was offered.
The biggest controversy surrounding Boskovski to date is the formation of the so-called "Lions" police reserve special force unit which is widely regarded as a Macedonian paramilitary unit. His political opponents are claiming that its 1,400 members will be used as a VMRO party militia.
More moderate members of VMRO, not including Prime Minister Georgievski, are convinced that Boskovski has become a real liability for their party.
Today, in Bale, a village in the Croatian province Istria, Boskovski's father and mother run his small hotel and restaurant and tend a few dozen goats. The name of the hotel is "Lion", the same as the label of his privately produced red wine.
Saso Ordanoski is IWPR's coordinating editor in Macedonia and editor of Macedonian weekly magazine Forum
NATO, EU Chiefs Tell Macedonians Time to Deliver Posted October 18, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011018/wl/balkans_macedonia_dc_1.html
Thursday October 18 5:42 AM ET
NATO, EU Chiefs Tell Macedonians Time to Deliver
By Kole Casule
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Top NATO and European Union officials visited Macedonia on an arm-twisting mission on Thursday, putting the onus on parliament to revive a delicate peace process which has hit deadlock.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who have nursed the plan through repeated setbacks, said legislators had to ratify reforms to reciprocate an arms handover by minority Albanian guerrillas.
``I think we have complied with our obligations. The Albanians have complied and I think it's time to end this process,'' Solana told reporters at Skopje airport.
A meeting of Macedonian and Albanian party leaders, hosted by Macedonia's president, failed to secure a breakthrough on Wednesday evening and plans to resume debate on a package of minority rights reforms on Thursday have been shelved.
``It's up to the Macedonian government and the parliament to deliver their side of the bargain,'' Robertson stressed, adding that political leaders had to bite the bullet if their aspirations to join NATO and the EU were to be taken seriously.
``It's not a matter of international pressure, it's about delivering promises that were solemnly made. There could easily be in this country a return to violence unless everything that was agreed is implemented. That's the priority,'' Robertson said.
Western patience is wearing thin after foot-dragging by Macedonian parties, which has led to three postponements of the crucial debate, and the announcement of narrow terms of amnesty for rebels who surrendered weapons to NATO troops this summer.
STUCK IN A RUT
The success of Thursday's mission will however hinge on both sides giving ground before Macedonian parties seek to force a referendum on the plans, which would probably be rejected.
Albanian leaders, who negotiated a political deal to end seven months of sporadic warfare in which rebels seized swathes of territory, are refusing to attend a debate unless plans to discuss amendments to the constitution one-by-one are scrapped.
``We will not take part in any parliamentary session if the constitutional changes are not presented in a package,'' said a senior official of the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP).
In a bid to break the deadlock, President Boris Trajkovski has submitted an alternative proposal, which tweaks a key line of the constitution's preamble in a bid to ease Macedonians' frustration at making concessions to Albanians ``at gunpoint.''
But the offer, which could make Macedonian politicians more amenable to approving reforms without further delay, appeared to have made little impression on Macedonia's two Albanian parties.
``We strongly stand by the fact that the agreement is non-negotiable,'' the PDP official said.
Threats by Trajkovski to stop sending reform bills to parliament unless the debate resumes, viewed by Western envoys as a major blow to the peace process, have also had no impact.
A separate bid to keep the process moving -- an initiative to allow police to return to former guerrilla-held territory under international supervision -- has been put back to next week after peace monitors raised questions about the amnesty.
A previous attempt to re-enter some villages, dubbed ''D-Day'' by hardline Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski, was thwarted due to lack of coordination with international monitors, who aim to ensure such delicate operations do not spark fresh fighting.
MACEDONIAN AID ROW: Albanians in Macedonia say they're not receiving their fair share of nternational relief supplies Posted October 16, 2001
IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 288, October 16, 200
http://www.iwpr.net
MACEDONIAN AID ROW
Albanians in Macedonia say they're not receiving their fair share of nternational relief supplies.
By Salajdin Salihu in Skopje
The ruined Albanian village of Drenoc, close to the town of Tetovo, has a ghostly appearance. The scars of war are clearly evident - burnt houses, empty shops and broken glass - and few people remain.
It's a familiar picture all over Macedonia, but now foreign aid is on the way to repair the damage wrought by the conflict that raged between Albanian guerrillas and government forces for most of this year.
Members of the Albanian minority, however, complain that an unfair share of this aid is being directed at Macedonian communities.
According to official sources, some 76,000 people in Macedonia have been displaced by the fighting. The UN High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, estimates that about 27,000 have left the country altogether.
The authorities say it will take substantial financial aid from developed countries to rehouse those uprooted during the conflict. A first assessment by the EU-funded government agency, the Coordinating Group for Crises Management, TKMK, puts the figure at 20 million US dollars.
The TKMK chief, Ilija Filipovski, says priority would be given to ethnically-mixed areas and areas considered safe.
Albanian analysts say what this really means is that Macedonians will be given preference over their community. They claim Albanian-inhabited places like Tanushe, Selca, Breza and Llaca have been sidelined.
The town-planning adviser in Tetova commune, Skender Palloshi, concurred, asserting that the TKMK hasn't even bothered to assess badly hit Albanian villages in mountainous areas around Tetovo.
In Drenoc, many Albanians found shelter with relatives nearby or fled to Kosovo. The Macedonians escaped to Skopje. The former complain that the plight of the latter is loudly reported in the media while they receive very little attention.
Villages in this region suffered some of the worst damage during the conflict "Winter is coming. I have no money to rebuild my house," said an Albanian from one highland village. "I worked for twenty years in Germany to earn money to built a house in Shipkovice, but it was ruined in a second."
Another thorny issue is the return of displaced people to their homes. Macedonians say they do not feel safe unless their own troops and police accompany them. But Albanians fear the return of the military might leave them open to retaliation, and would prefer ethnically-mixed security forces.
A Macedonian from Tetovo who now lives in Skopje commented, "I prefer to stay here for the time being and just make visits to my old home." But he hopes life will eventually go back to normal.
An Albanian from Llaca, near Tetovo, said he moved to a relative's house after his own home was burnt down by government troops. He is angry that his village was excluded from the TKMK recovery project on grounds that it was unsafe.
Humanitarian organisations are distributing aid to the former conflict areas. UNHCR is contributing mostly beds, sheets and water to villages in Tetovo and Kumanovo. The relief organisation and government agencies have used high school buses to deliver the supplies. Local inhabitants welcome the deliveries, but say that with winter approaching what they mostly need is decent shelter.
Salajdin Salihu is a journalist with the Albanian language weekly Lobi.
Macedonian and Western officials discuss police redeployment Posted October 16, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011016/1/1kipw.html
Tuesday October 16, 10:43 PM
Macedonian and Western officials discuss police redeployment
SKOPJE, Oct 16 (AFP) -
The Macedonian government has presented a plan to Western representatives for the redeployment of police into former conflict zones and the return of refugees, officials said Tuesday.
Representatives of NATO, the OSCE, the United States and the European Union met with the government's coordinating body of senior government officials on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Ilia Filipovski told a news conference.
He said the meeting discussed a "pilot plan" prepared by the interior ministry for the deployment of security forces, together with EU monitors and NATO troops, in northern areas of the country that were formerly controlled by ethnic Albanian rebels, and the return of refugees and displaced persons.
Craig Jenness, the chief of the Macedonia mission for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said the Western representatives are studying the plan and would discuss it further at a meeting with the coordinating body on Wednesday.
He said they also planned to "make a joint recommendation to the president as to what our view is on how to move forward."
The planned return of security forces to former conflict areas has been a contentious issue between the government and Western envoys since an August 13 peace accord aimed at preventing an insurgency by ethnic Albanian guerrillas from igniting another Balkan war.
The government earlier this month delayed a redeployment plan under international pressure.
The Western envoys have insisted that the country's parliament approve political reforms under the peace accord and declare an amnesty for the rebels before the deployment can proceed.
The government of President Boris Trajkovski last week declared an amnesty for the rebels, but parliament has yet to enact the reforms, which are aimed at improving the rights of the country's ethnic Albanian minority.
Under the peace plan, international monitors from the OSCE and the European Union are to be deployed across the country. Skopje has also agreed they will be protected by a German-led NATO force.
The rebel National Liberation Army launched an insurgency in February in a bid to secure improved rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up almost one third of the country's two million people.
As part of the Western-backed peace accord, the rebels handed in almost 4,000 weapons to NATO troops in an operation that ended last month.
Macedonian President Threatens Talks Posted October 16, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011016/wl/macedonia_3.html
Tuesday October 16 6:34 PM ET
Macedonian President Threatens Talks
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Macedonia's president threatened to pull out of peace talks Tuesday unless lawmakers stop stalling on a Western-engineered accord meant to upgrade ethnic Albanian rights.
Under the August accord, ethnic Albanian rebels agreed to stop fighting and handed in more than 4,000 weapons to NATO in exchange for constitutional amendments granting the large ethnic Albanian minority greater rights.
The weapons were turned over by Sept. 26, but parliament has failed to enact the amendments.
Tuesday, President Boris Trajkovski condemned ``certain groups of deputies'' for ``continuing to block'' crucial constitutional amendments that are part of the August peace agreement.
``If these unacceptable efforts go on, I shall consider them a form of dictate and will have to reconsider my role'' in the peace process, Trajkovski said in a letter to parliament without elaborating.
Trajkovski's role in the process is pivotal, as the president is the only figure with enough stature to act as a go-between among factions of the majority Macedonians and ethnic Albanians.
If Trajkovski backs out of the peace process, the country could again be plunged into disarray.
But some also blame Trajkovski for the delay in passing the legislation. The law calls for the president to review all 15 amendments and pass them on to parliament ahead of any vote to make them law.
Instead of presenting parliament with the 15 amendments, for enactment as a package deal as called for by the ethnic Albanians, Trajkovski has only given them nine.
Ethnic Albanian deputies have boycotted key parliament meetings, fearing a ploy by the Macedonians to introduce changes in some of the amendments, particularly one that would make all ethnic groups equal under the law.
Zamir Dika, an ethnic Albanian deputy, said that Trajkovski's actions were ``unacceptable'' and the ethnic Albanian deputies will only return to parliament once all amendments are on the table.
NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, were expected in Skopje on Thursday. Officials in Brussels said the two would talk with Macedonian leaders about pushing through the amendments as a package deal.
Also Tuesday, Macedonia's parliament postponed a debate on whether the peace deal should be put to a nationwide referendum, a move that the West has warned would sink the peace process.
Ethnic Albanian Rebels Accept Amnesty Posted October 12, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011012/wl/macedonia_9.html
Friday October 12 5:31 AM ET
Ethnic Albanian Rebels Accept Amnesty
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia welcomed a government-declared amnesty, a fresh show of support for a Western-brokered peace deal to end months of warfare between government troops and militants fighting for more minority rights.
The National Liberation Army - as the rebels are known - said Thursday they accept the amnesty declaration announced by the Macedonian president earlier this week as an ``expression of good political will.''
But their statement, signed by rebel leader Ali Ahmeti and obtained by The Associated Press, also reiterated earlier demands by ethnic Albanian politicians here that the amnesty be passed as a law in parliament. In addition, it called for the release of all ethnic Albanians detained for participating in six months of clashes.
The Aug. 13 peace accord halted fighting that killed dozens and threatened all-out war. The rebels took up arms to fight for broader rights for ethnic Albanians - a third of Macedonia's 2 million population.
Complying with provisions of the peace agreement, the rebels handed in more than 4,000 weapons to NATO (news - web sites) in return for promised changes in the constitution that would put the two communities here - majority Macedonians and minority ethnic Albanians - on equal footing.
Hard-liners in the Macedonian parliament have since stalled the adoption of 15 constitutional amendments that would upgrade ethnic Albanian rights.
Some ethnic Albanian officials are doubting the sincerity of the majority Macedonian lawmakers to follow through on the amnesty.
Refet Elmazi, a deputy interior minister and an ethnic Albanian official, said Thursday that just days before the amnesty was declared, police raided villages in efforts to apprehend young ethnic Albanian men in possession of arms. Some 50 persons were arrested, he said.
While officials have not confirmed these arrests, police said troops found a cache of arms in rebel-held territory on Wednesday. They uncovered buried weapons in the village of Tanuse, near the Albanian border and 50 miles southwest of Skopje, police spokesman Vasko Sutarov said.
Macedonia amnesty seen as ill-defined and sowing doubt Posted October 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011011/3/1k85c.html
Thursday October 11, 7:48 PM
Macedonia amnesty seen as ill-defined and sowing doubt
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE (Reuters) - An amnesty proclaimed for disarmed minority Albanian guerrillas in Macedonia may contain loopholes that risk increasing distrust in a troubled peace process, diplomats say.
"The amnesty was supposed to be a major step forward to reconciliation. But when you take a closer look, it sows doubt and confusion, like a lot of the behaviour here with respect to the peace plan," said a senior Western diplomat.
"The international community here has its hands full trying to carry the whole country -- bobbing and weaving, kicking and screaming -- to the other side of the abyss (of war)."
When it was signed on August 13, President Boris Trajkovski issued an accompanying declaration promising immunity from prosecution for all guerrillas who voluntarily disarmed and had not committed acts indictable by the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
The general pardon was supposed to encourage guerrillas to reintegrate peacefully in Macedonian society by releasing them from fear of arrest or persecution for fighting the state.
The rebel National Liberation Army (NLA), which ignited the fifth ethnic conflict in the embers of old federal Yugoslavia since 1991, duly handed in almost 4,000 weapons to NATO and disbanded last month.
But when the amnesty emerged on Tuesday in the form of a cabinet decree endorsing Trajkovski's gesture, "war crimes" seemed more broadly defined than the tribunal's writ.
LOOPHOLES
Ambiguous language in the decree hints that any guerrilla possibly involved in five incidents of deadly ambush and abduction, "among others", will face war crimes charges, although the victims were primarily combatants, not civilians.
Compounding the confusion, the decree did not say whether former NLA commander Ali Ahmeti and 10 aides would be released from a politically charged indictment for "war crimes" issued by Skopje last summer during the heat of battle.
Senior government officials able to give a definitive answer dodged reporters seeking clarification.
"Is the government here leaving it up to the tribunal to decide if war crimes occurred, as international law stipulates, or will it try to redefine them for domestic political purposes? Hard to say," said another Western diplomat.
"It's not clear who is covered by the amnesty. The worst case interpretation is that very few definitely would be."
For ethnic Albanian political party leaders and former guerrilla officers, the amnesty looked dangerously flawed.
"In not expressly including those who may have taken part in (combat ambushes), police will be free to charge any ex-NLA man, to harass, jail and mistreat them," said Aziz Pollozhani, vice-president of the Party for Democratic Prosperity.
"This supposed amnesty does not make us feel safe. It seems to have the opposite aim," a prominent former NLA brigade commander known only as Leka told Reuters.
The lack of transparency in political business is proving a serious impediment to Macedonia's peace programme.
Diplomatic overseers are increasingly troubled by the Balkan-style preference here for tactical obfuscation, obstruction and point-scoring -- persisting with war by other means -- over the give-and-take inherent in true lasting peace.
Macedonian nationalist leaders, whose resistance to genuine power-sharing with the large Albanian minority kindled the uprising, signed the peace deal only after being warned by Western mediators that the country would be torn apart and denied international reconstruction aid if they did not.
U.S. ATTACKS SEAR PEACE PROCESS
Then they stalled ratification of the treaty in parliament by filibustering and absenteeism to thwart a quorum, hoping the West would repudiate ex-NLA men as "terrorists" deserving the same treatment as the radical Islamic targets of its war on international terrorism now unfolding in Afghanistan.
European Union leaders came last week to disabuse Skopje of that notion, saying that to associate Islamic suicide pilots with Albanian rebels seeking improved civil rights was wrong.
The nationalists relented and said parliament would convene this week for pre-ratification debate. But the process has broken down again -- with the Albanians the culprits this time.
Their two parties scuttled the session by failing to show up because the 15 draft constitutional amendments envisaged by the peace pact were not being submitted as one package.
Macedonians want them passed one by one and have removed two amendments touching on equality from the agenda.
These would drop references to the primacy of "the Macedonian people" and their Orthodox church -- most Albanians are nominal Muslims -- from the constitution's preamble.
The influential Orthodox clergy has threatened to ostracise any Macedonian legislator who votes for the church deletion, which risks complicating the reform process.
NATO troops now acting as the security arm of international monitors have induced calm along ceasefire lines. But NATO's mandate runs only until December 31 and Skopje is loath to extend it, fearing rebels will misuse it to hive off territory.
"The situation is not encouraging. With reforms in limbo, Ahmeti's boys are getting uneasy. Frustration could boil over if politicians drag this out much longer," said one diplomat.
Macedonians accused of war crimes: Call for Hague to investigate role of hardline interior minister Posted October 6, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,564266,00.html
Macedonians accused of war crimes
Call for Hague to investigate role of hardline interior minister
Giles Tremlett in Madrid and Nick Wood
Saturday October 6, 2001 The Guardian
The Hague tribunal will next week be sent a list of alleged war crimes committed by the Macedonian army and police, accompanied by a request that it investigate the hardline interior minister, Ljube Boskovski.
The chief prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, will receive at least two dozen eyewitness accounts of alleged killings, kidnappings, torture and the systematic destruction of mosques gathered by the European Council of Humanity, Action and Cooperation (ECHAC), which carried out similar work in Kosovo and East Timor.
The pan-European group wants the tribunal to investigate Mr Boskovski for "grave violations of the Geneva convention, violations of the laws governing wars and crimes against humanity".
The allegations surfaced as Mr Boskovski comes under criticism from former fighters of the recently disbanded National Liberation Army (NLA) for the failure of the government in Skopje to abide by an August peace deal to end six months of conflict.
Macedonian security forces pulled back from positions close to the old frontline with the NLA yesterday, amid fierce international criticism.
Parliament has failed to ratify the deal or to provide an amnesty for NLA fighters, as promised. Ratification is already 12 days behind schedule, and there appears little chance of most MPs finding the time, or inclination, to pass such a measure soon.
The EU external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, visited Skopje this week to rebuke the Macedonian regime and announced that a donors' conference scheduled for October 15 was being postponed.
While alleged NLA crimes received coverage earlier this year, the ECHAC report contains the first claims of widespread abuses by the army and police. Human Rights Watch, a US group, has also denounced the killing of six ethnic Albanian civilians in Ljuboten, five miles north of Skopje, days before the ceasefire was signed.
Western officials have said that an amnesty will allow indictments from the Hague to be brought against members of the Macedonian security forces and the NLA.
"If peace in Macedonia is going to endure, the perpetrators of serious violations on both sides must be brought to justice," said Elizabeth Andersen, the executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
ECHAC says the police, army and paramilitary groups have been using the war with the NLA as an excuse to launch a systematic campaign to force ethnic Albanians out of the country.
"An ample campaign was carried out aimed at varying the ethnic composition of the republic of Macedonia," the group says, adding that during May and June there was a deliberate policy of shelling civilian targets in the north.
At the same time harassment of Albanians around Macedonia was stepped up, with kidnappings, killings and torture, it claims. It says the campaign reached its peak when a majority of ethnic Albanian civilians were driven out of the southern town of Manastir and their homes and businesses damaged.
Although ECHAC claims Mr Boskovski was behind the campaigns, in collusion with senior defence ministry officials, it has provided little concrete evidence. It is appealing to the tribunal to demand documents about meetings and communications from the interior ministry that could show what was going on.
ECHAC says it will produce a second collection of eyewitness accounts alleging abuse and crimes by the NLA. It says that its teams in the area in July and August received five times as many complaints from ethnic Albanians as from ethnic Slavs.
Human Rights Watch has investigated several cases of erious NLA abuses. In June NLA forces detained and tortured eight elderly ethnic Slav civilians from the village of Matejce, and subjected them to mock executions.
On August 7 the NLA allegedly kidnapped three road workers, who were severely beaten and sexually abused for several hours. There have also been claims of kidnappings, expulsion of civilians and destruction of Orthodox Christian sites by the NLA.
• ISMAIL MEIDANI said police in Skopje took away his friend, Metush Ajetit, on June 1. "Three days later they threw his body out on to the street from a car. The autopsy showed that he had been tortured to death. There were horrible marks on the body."
• Farmer LUAN KODRA said two planes and several helicopters appeared above his village of Lisec on June 27. "There were no NLA people in the village. But they started to bomb and machine-gun us. Adem Veliu, Ymer Veliu, Dorina Elezi and Alban Daci died because of the bombs."
• Student ERDI SHAMETI, from Matec, said police took away seven of his friends and tortured them on May 21. He said police claimed falsely to have found arms in their car. "They were beaten for three days with truncheons and burned with cigarettes."
• Captain ARBEN NEZIRI, an army officer from Skopje, said he was taken away from his home by interior ministry police on June 10 and tortured. "They want to clean Albanians out of the army and police completely."
• AGIM PJAZITIT, from Radushe, said three of his relatives and a friend were arrested and accused of belonging to the NLA. They were not allowed to see a lawyer. One saw a relative. "He said that the ministry of interior police's claims that they had admitted being terrorists were false and had come after they had been submitted to terrible tortures (beatings with truncheons, use of electrodes, burns)."
• BESA GJINALI, a housewife from Batince, said that her neighbour Mijazi Ibishi, a factory worker, disappeared on June 16. "We all know it was the police. They have been threatening us for months. They want us to leave our houses and go."