EU moots steps to halt disapora support for Macedonia rebels Posted June 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010611/1/v81w.html
Monday June 11, 8:18 PM
EU moots steps to halt disapora support for Macedonia rebels
LUXEMBOURG, June 11 (AFP) -
EU foreign ministers raised the prospect Monday of taking firm steps to stop ethnic Albanians living in western Europe from supporting rebel forces in Macedonia, a European source said.
No decisions were taken, but the fact that the idea was raised was a sign that the European Union might go beyond the diplomatic and moral support it has been giving Skopje since the start of the four-month-old insurgency.
The European source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that "several ministers" spoke out in favor of measures aimed at the ethnic Albanian diaspora suspected of bankrolling the National Liberation Army (NLA).
Some expressed frustration that Switzerland -- home to western Europe's biggest ethnic Albanian community, and not an EU member -- has failed to choke off the alleged flow of money and support.
Britain's new Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Greek counterpart George Papandreou meanwhile called for "further cooperation" between NATO and Macedonia "if things don't improve quickly," according to the source.
"Nobody spoke against this," the source added.
Stimulating the debate Monday was a report from EU foreign policy high representative Javier Solana, who was in Skopje for talks over the weekend as the NLA threatened to hit the capital with mortars.
Solana, in concert with NATO, has been seeking to politically isolate the NLA, while encouraging Macedonia's multi-ethnic national unity government to quickly address the legitimate grievances of its ethnic Albanian minority.
In a statement at the end of their Macedonia debate Monday, the EU foreign ministers reiterated "growing concern at the serious deterioration of the security situation" in the keystone Balkan state.
They also condemned "continued terrorist actions by ethnic Albanian extremists," adding: "The extremists must lay down their arms."
At the same time, they called upon Macedonian security forces to act with restraint, saying: "Any response to (NLA) actions must remain proportionate."
Regarding a growing tide of refugees, the ministers "called upon all parties to avoid endangering the civil population, to ensure full respect for human rights and to facilitate the free access of humanitarian organizations."
On Skopje's efforts to bring the fighting to a halt, the foreign ministers encouraged the implementation "as soon as possible" of a disarmament strategy recently set out by President Boris Trajkovski.
They added: "A comprehensive, concrete and substantive reform package ensuring rights of all people in the country, regardless of their ethnic origin, is urgently required."
To that end, they invited Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski to a summit of EU heads of state and government in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Friday and Saturday to discuss the state of progress on inter-ethnic dialogue.
Last April, when it signed an association pact with the European Union, the Macedonian government said it intended to draw up a progress report in time for the summit.
Rebels Threaten Macedonian Cities Posted June 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010610/8/uusp.html
Monday June 11, 1:57 AM
Rebels Threaten Macedonian Cities
By MERITA DHIMGJOKA, Associated Press Writer
ARACINOVO, Macedonia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels threatened Sunday to take their insurgency into Macedonia's cities, warning they would hit the capital's airport and other targets unless the government stopped fighting them in the north.
Government troops assaulted rebels who control a reservoir and have cut off water supplies to the 100,000 residents of the town of Kumanovo in fighting that left one soldier dead, state television said.
Troops were also encircling Aracinovo, a town just outside the capital Skopje that rebels seized Saturday, and were waiting for orders to attack, as thousands of residents fled the town.
``If the Macedonian army offensive in the northern part of the country does not stop by tomorrow morning, we will attack the airport, oil refineries, police stations in towns and other government installations,'' a rebel leader known as Commander Hoxha told The Associated Press.
In a telephone interview, he also said government attacks on rebels ensconced in Aracinovo - which lies in shooting range of the capital and its airport - would bring the same kind of rebel retaliation.
Only a few thousand people remained Sunday in Aracinovo, where the normal population of about 13,000 had grown in recent weeks to 20,000 due to an influx of refugees, locals said.
Some 7,000 ethnic Albanians fleeing Aracinovo crossed the nearby border into Kosovo on Friday and Saturday, Astrid van Genderen Stort, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said Sunday in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
Since the eruption of the ethnic Albanian insurgency in February, more 29,000 have fled to Kosovo, she said.
The threat to Aracinovo, an ethnically mixed town about 4 miles southeast of Skopje, also drove out thousands of Macedonian Slavs. On Sunday, dozens of them peered with binoculars toward their homes from a police checkpoint a little more than a mile from their community.
At the Blace border crossing to Kosovo Sunday, hundreds of women and children lined up for document checks after being dropped off by taxis and buses. Men accompanying them said they would go back to threatened homes after escorting their families across.
Ismet Ethemi, 46, said he, his wife and their five children left the village of Idrizov, south of Skopje, after the predominantly Slav majority began carrying guns in public.
``They have armed themselves, and we do not feel safe anymore,'' he said.
Meanwhile, government troops used tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships in an attempt to dislodge rebels holding the reservoir at Lipkovo, about 15 miles north of the capital. A soldier was killed and three soldiers and a policeman wounded before the fighting subsided in the evening, state television said.
Rebels cut off water a week ago to Kumanovo, about five miles to the east. Since then, the population has been supplied with tanker trucks from elsewhere in Macedonia and neighboring Bulgaria.
Macedonian political leaders met Saturday with Javier Solana, the European Union's security affairs chief, who urged restraint.
Solana praised a tentative peace plan outlined by President Boris Trajkovski that officials said includes partial amnesty for the rebels, deployment of international monitors, a greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state institutions and the ``reintegration into society'' of rebels who voluntarily disarm.
But the top ethnic Albanian leader, Arben Xhaferi, criticized the peace offer as ``shapeless'' and demanded an immediate cease-fire.
Ethnic Albanian guerrillas threaten to attack Macedonian capital Posted June 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010611/1/uztf.html
Monday June 11, 9:10 AM
Ethnic Albanian guerrillas threaten to attack Macedonian capital
The deadline is approaching for ethnic Albanian rebels to carry out a threat to bombard the Macedonian capital if the army did not halt its offensive in the north.
The rebels threatened Sunday to bombard the capital from their new front on the outskirts of Skopje starting at 4 am (0200 GMT) if the army did not stop its offensive, as thousands of refugees swarmed across the border into neighbouring Kosovo.
The threat by rebel leader Commander Hoxha, spearheading a rebel force estimated at up to 800 fighters in the Skopje suburb of Aracinovo, upped pressure on the fragile multi-ethnic government struggling to contain the growing insurgency.
Commander Hoxha told AFP by telephone he was throwing down the gauntlet to Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski to stop an army push on rebel-held villages north of Skopje or see mortar rounds land on his capital for the first time in the four-month crisis, which has threatened a new Balkans bloodbath.
"I have launched an ultimatum to Georgievski. He has until tomorrow (Monday) morning to stop the bombardments. They are razing the houses in the villages.
"I will start attacking police stations and the airport, the government and parliament, everything I can with our 120 mm mortars. We don't have many but they are effective. We will attack from the mountains.
"We are not very good shots but we can easily hit the airport," he said, warning there could be civilian casualties.
Military sources say that a 120 mm mortar could fire at a range of up to eight kilometres (five miles), which would put the centre of the capital within firing distance.
One Western diplomat in Skopje said the rebels could probably not hit the airport or the city centre from their current positions, although they could "undoubtedly take out the main road to the airport," an important logistical hub for NATO's peacekeeping operations in UN-administered Kosovo.
He said if the rebels do start lobbing shells into the edges of Skopje, the Macedonia army will have to "reconsider its tactics."
"Obviously they can't just stand by and let them do it. They may have to stop their activity in the north and do something about it," he said.
Macedonians flee Skopje suburb as rebels fight on Posted June 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010610/3/us6e.html
Sunday June 10, 9:54 PM
Macedonians flee Skopje suburb as rebels fight on
By Alister Doyle
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Residents fled a suburb of the Macedonian capital on Sunday, fearing they would be engulfed in an insurrection by ethnic Albanian rebels, as Macedonia's army kept up a three-day assault of guerrilla-held villages.
In an eastern suburb of Skopje, families crammed into cars or buses after their homes came within firing range of the rebels who captured the small town of Aracinovo 10 km (six miles) east of the capital on Friday.
Almost all of those packing up for fear of the four-month rebellion were themselves ethnic Albanians.
"I'm going to take out my wife and four children," said Meqani, a 33-year-old ethnic Albanian in the suburb of Cento. "But I'm going to come back to defend my house. If I don't, the Macedonians will steal everything."
Macedonian soldiers with assault rifles sat behind sandbagged positions and blocked the road leading to Aracinovo.
"I want to take my kids to a safe place," said Lubomir, an ethnic Slav driving his wife and three children in a car laden with possessions. A child's blue and yellow plastic tricycle was strapped to the roof rack.
Just a few streets away, however, residents said that no one had left. And Cento shops were open as normal and a group of men sat around drinking coffee at a cafe.
HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS To the northeast of the capital, the Macedonian army kept up a three-day-long barrage of the villages of Slupcane and Orizari with helicopter gunships, artillery, tanks and heavy machineguns.
The rebels of the National Liberation Army (NLA), who say they are fighting to improve the rights of Albanians who make up 30 percent of Macedonia's population, say they have weapons in Aracinovo able to strike the city or the airport.
The Macedonian government accuses the insurgents of wanting to tip the country into chaos and provoke a new Balkan war.
Clouds of dusty orange smoke billowed up from the villages of Slupcane and Orizari after the strikes. Reporters, viewing the assault from several kilometres (miles) away, could see a tank on the fringes of Slupcane.
But a rebel commander, who goes by the nom de guerre Shpati, said that the guerrillas had regained ground lost on Saturday.
The Macedonian army "had a lot of losses of equipment and men, but now we are not surrounded," he told Reuters by mobile phone. There was no way of confirming the rival claims or if there were casualties.
At the border with Kosovo, hundreds of ethnic Albanians were flooding across the frontier. A record 4,466 people crossed into the Yugoslav province on Saturday, the most since the conflict broke out in February.
"So far today about 1,000 have crossed," said Astrid van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Kosovo. "The numbers could easily match yesterday," she added.
A total of about 30,000 have fled since the insurrection began. "We can't stay in Macedonia," said Dili, a 32-year-old ethnic Albanian teacher from Cento who was driving a jeep with 13 other family members crammed in the back.
The border was calm on Sunday and whole families were crossing with few queues.
Border guards had turned back many men of fighting age on Saturday, saying they might be needed for a military call-up, accusing them of being guerrillas or saying their papers were not in order.
Back in Skopje, ethnic Slavs from Aracinovo were furious at being ejected from their village.
"I only have the clothes I'm wearing," said Robert, who said he had been sleeping in a car on the main road leading to Aracinovo after leaving his home on Friday.
"The rebels in Aracinovo are almost all from the town. I can give you dozens of names and addresses," he said.
The rebels say they are fighting to end what they call discrimination by the majority Slavs in everything from jobs to education. Albanians also want official recognition of their language.
Police conducted forced entry into the apartments of "FAKTI" journalists Posted June 10, 2001
Police conducted forced entry into the apartments of "FAKTI" journalists
Members of Macedonian police entered by forced and with no authorization at noon Sunday in the appartments of the 'FAKTI' journalists in Skopje, Hysen Salihu, Selajdin Salihu, Irfan Agushi and Halil Berisha. All of the journalists are part of the team who report on the latest events in the Likova area. At the moment when police had entered by force into the appartment the journalists were at our offices. According to some eye witnesses, police were interested to know where the journalists were and when they are supposed to be back home.
The editorial staff of 'FAKTI" is concerned about this illegal interference of the police at the private lives of the journalists, therefore calls the president of the state, prime minister, the minister of Internal Affairs as well as all organizations and other institutions to engage themselves on protection of the freedom of expression, and undertake all the necessary measures in order to prevent interferences over the duties of "FAKTI' journalists.
The editorial office of "FAKTI" newspaper protests about such a behavior by the Macedonian police and considers such actions as a direct pressure over its professional daily duties.
The editorial Office of "FAKTI" newspaper
10 June, 2001
Shkopje
IWPR EDITOR [Veton Latifi] DETAINED IN MACEDONIA Posted June 10, 2001
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr/bcr_20010609_1_eng.txt
(Special Alert, 9-Jun-01)
IWPR EDITOR DETAINED IN MACEDONIA
At approximately 9:00 AM on Saturday, June 9, IWPR assistant editor in Macedonia Veton Latifi was arrested at a police checkpoint on the road towards Kumanovo at the outskirts of Skopje, the Macedonian capital.
Latifi, 26, a regular contributor to IWPR's Balkan Crisis Report who also works for the Albanian programme of the Macedonian state television, was travelling in a shared taxi with four other passengers and was the only one taken to the police station, after a review of identity cards.
"It is an order," Latifi was told by one of the officers as he was taken in a special windowless van to the police station.
During his detention, Latifi's mobile telephone, computer disks, press cards, and other material related to his work as a journalist were seized. He was not allowed to make any telephone calls. Police regularly pointed guns at him, and several times he was threatened verbally. "Definitely he will die," a member of the police special forces said.
After nearly two hours, he was released without explanation. Some of his computer disks were retained.
This is the second time Latifi, who has extensive contacts with international diplomats and others engaged in the crisis, has had trouble with the Macedonian authorities since the crisis erupted in the country. A month ago, police arrested his father in Kumanovo and detained him for one night without charges.
The incident occurs in the context of increasing fighting between Macedonian forces and the National Liberation Army.
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting condemns this effort to intimidate a working journalist.
************ VISIT IWPR ON-LINE:
Almost 7,000 Macedonian Albanians flee to Kosovo in two days Posted June 10, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010609/1/uj6r.html
Sunday June 10, 5:51 AM
Almost 7,000 Macedonian Albanians flee to Kosovo in two days
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, June 9 (AFP) -
Almost 7,000 ethnic Albanians have fled Macedonia for Kosovo in the last two days to escape fighting between rebels and government troops, the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, said Saturday.
Most of the refugees came from Aracinovo on the outskirts of the Macedonian capital Skopje, where Albanian rebels from the National Liberation Army entered on Friday, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said.
Earlier Saturday, the UNHCR said that the conflict in Macedonia has displaced around 40,000 people since it began in February.
Around 18,000 of the displaced ethnic Albanians and Macedonian Slavs are in Macedonia, while an estimated 20,000 ethnic Albanians are sheltering in the UN-run Yugoslav province of Kosovo to the north, said spokeswoman Brita Helleland.
She said 2,700 had registered with aid agencies on Friday alone after the NLA pushed into Aracinovo, the first time they had reached the outer suburbs of the capital in force.
Macedonians flee Skopje suburb as rebels fight on Posted June 10, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010610/3/us6e.html
Sunday June 10, 9:54 PM
Macedonians flee Skopje suburb as rebels fight on
By Alister Doyle
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Residents fled a suburb of the Macedonian capital on Sunday, fearing they would be engulfed in an insurrection by ethnic Albanian rebels, as Macedonia's army kept up a three-day assault of guerrilla-held villages.
In an eastern suburb of Skopje, families crammed into cars or buses after their homes came within firing range of the rebels who captured the small town of Aracinovo 10 km (six miles) east of the capital on Friday.
Almost all of those packing up for fear of the four-month rebellion were themselves ethnic Albanians.
"I'm going to take out my wife and four children," said Meqani, a 33-year-old ethnic Albanian in the suburb of Cento. "But I'm going to come back to defend my house. If I don't, the Macedonians will steal everything."
Macedonian soldiers with assault rifles sat behind sandbagged positions and blocked the road leading to Aracinovo.
"I want to take my kids to a safe place," said Lubomir, an ethnic Slav driving his wife and three children in a car laden with possessions. A child's blue and yellow plastic tricycle was strapped to the roof rack.
Just a few streets away, however, residents said that no one had left. And Cento shops were open as normal and a group of men sat around drinking coffee at a cafe.
HELICOPTER GUNSHIPS To the northeast of the capital, the Macedonian army kept up a three-day-long barrage of the villages of Slupcane and Orizari with helicopter gunships, artillery, tanks and heavy machineguns.
The rebels of the National Liberation Army (NLA), who say they are fighting to improve the rights of Albanians who make up 30 percent of Macedonia's population, say they have weapons in Aracinovo able to strike the city or the airport.
The Macedonian government accuses the insurgents of wanting to tip the country into chaos and provoke a new Balkan war.
Clouds of dusty orange smoke billowed up from the villages of Slupcane and Orizari after the strikes. Reporters, viewing the assault from several kilometres (miles) away, could see a tank on the fringes of Slupcane.
But a rebel commander, who goes by the nom de guerre Shpati, said that the guerrillas had regained ground lost on Saturday.
The Macedonian army "had a lot of losses of equipment and men, but now we are not surrounded," he told Reuters by mobile phone. There was no way of confirming the rival claims or if there were casualties.
At the border with Kosovo, hundreds of ethnic Albanians were flooding across the frontier. A record 4,466 people crossed into the Yugoslav province on Saturday, the most since the conflict broke out in February.
"So far today about 1,000 have crossed," said Astrid van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Kosovo. "The numbers could easily match yesterday," she added.
A total of about 30,000 have fled since the insurrection began. "We can't stay in Macedonia," said Dili, a 32-year-old ethnic Albanian teacher from Cento who was driving a jeep with 13 other family members crammed in the back.
The border was calm on Sunday and whole families were crossing with few queues.
Border guards had turned back many men of fighting age on Saturday, saying they might be needed for a military call-up, accusing them of being guerrillas or saying their papers were not in order.
Back in Skopje, ethnic Slavs from Aracinovo were furious at being ejected from their village.
"I only have the clothes I'm wearing," said Robert, who said he had been sleeping in a car on the main road leading to Aracinovo after leaving his home on Friday.
"The rebels in Aracinovo are almost all from the town. I can give you dozens of names and addresses," he said.
The rebels say they are fighting to end what they call discrimination by the majority Slavs in everything from jobs to education. Albanians also want official recognition of their language.
An Academic Lunch Turned into a Political Case Posted June 10, 2001
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THU, 21 JUN 2001 01:01:34 GMT
An Academic Lunch Turned into a Political Case
AIM Tirana, June 10, 2001
When he attended a lunch Djordji Efremovski organised in his honour during the Conference of the Academies of the Balkans, held in Skoplje in late May, President of the Academy of Sciences of Albania Ylli Popa could not have suspected that it would turn into a political lunch, as well as an important date for bilateral relations between these two countries.
During that lunch President of the Macedonian Academy proposed to his Albanian counterpart a solution to the current Macedonian crisis by means of the exchange of territories and population between Macedonia and Albania. Professor Popa passed over this proposal in silence thinking that it was just a free (leisurely) academic discussion over a lunch, but it turned that it was not quite so. Four days later, President of the Macedonian Academy publicly presented a plan for the exchange of territories and population between the two countries as a proposal for the resolution of the crisis, while the Macedonian media informed the public that the proposal had been also submitted to the President of the Albanian Academy of Sciences. Thus, an academic lunch turned into a political case regarding the newly created situation in relations between the two countries.
Actually, proposal of the President of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences came like a bolt out of the blue in mutual relations of these two states, because this was the first time that an offer on the change of state borders and exchange of territories and population came from such a high level in Macedonia.
But, it seems that precisely because of that Albania found it hard to react. Actually, although it sounds like science fiction, the proposal of the first Macedonian academician was very courageous in view of the offer on changing the existing state borders. This is even more so if we keep in mind the fact that the Macedonian Government used to accuse of such intentions (redrawing of borders) the so called National Liberation Army, which is fighting against the Government's forces.
Although this proposal came as a bomb from Skoplje and concerned the bilateral relations of these two countries and although the Macedonians proposed a map on the division of territories, it was clearly unacceptable for the Albanians and the Government in Tirana was cautious enough not to issue any official statement in that connection. Although very busy with the election campaign for parliamentary elections on June 24, in his reply to a journalist's question at a rally, Prime Minister Ilir Meta rejected the proposal of the Macedonian Academy. Rexhep Mejdani, President of Albania, who did not join the election campaign, was even more critical. In an interview for an Italian daily he said that the Macedonian proposal was wrong and underlined that while the Albanians and their political representatives were working hard for the preservation of the territorial integrity of Macedonia, representatives of the Macedonian cultural and political elite were forwarding an idea which was threatening to damage not only the stability of Macedonia, but also of the entire Balkan region.
What catches the eye is that the Macedonian proposal, which envisages that the town of Pogradec and the Albanian part of the Lakes Ohrid and Prespa should go to Macedonia, was submitted at the height of the electoral campaign in Albania. Although it could have served as an excuse for heightening the nationalistic tensions and raising temperature among political parties running in the elections, that did not happen.
The Macedonian question still received little or no attention in the election campaign of various political parties. In a special release of June 2, the Democratic Party condemned Macedonian proposals as wrong and inspired by strong Slav-Macedonian streams, which were planning the disintegration of Macedonia and which are unacceptable to a modern world mentality. Gjana, the Democratic Party Vice-President called this plan "political madness", while the Socialist Party, which is heading the Government coalition, pointed out that it was time to abolish the borders and not change them. Until now, other political parties did not deal with this subject. There were also many reactions in the town of Pogradec, which according to the Macedonian plan, should be given to Macedonia. Lady Major of Pogradec called the proposal absurd.
In contrast to political parties, the Albanian media dedicated greater attention and gave more space to the Macedonian proposal, criticising it harshly. The Albanian media even warned that various Macedonian circles wanted to provoke the destabilisation of Macedonia and pointed to similarities between this proposal and the infamous Memorandum on Kosovo of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, which became a platform of the nationalistic policy of the former President Milosevic. Actually, the Government and political parties of Albania were of the same opinion as the Albanian political parties in Macedonia, which insisted on the preservation of Macedonia as a joint state of Macedonians and Albanians alike. Several days ago a study of the State Department concluded that 87 percent of interviewed Albanians in Macedonia were for the preservation of Macedonia. Speaking about the plan of the Macedonian Academy, the Albanian Deputy Foreign Minister, Pellumb Xhufi, stated that they were not in favour of any divisions, but of a democratic society and that the above-mentioned idea represented a return to the 19th century now, on the threshold of 21st century in the idea of cohabitation is predominant.
Although the proposal of Macedonian academicians on the exchange of territories and population between Albania and Macedonia came at the height of the electoral campaign in Albania and of the internal crisis in Macedonia, it did not produce the desired effects. That can be explained.
Since the Macedonian Government and the international factor harshly criticised the armed Albanian groups in Macedonia, rallied under the sign NOV (UCK in the Albanian), of wishing to destroy the state, the official and political circles in Tirana thought that it would not be smart to start any discussions with certain Macedonian circles which demand the same, because they hoped that the international community might oppose that plan. It seems that Tirana was right in this respect, because both the European Union through Solana, as well as NATO through its officials and the USA through James Sweygert, Assistant State Secretary, assessed the proposal of the Macedonian academicians dangerous. Tirana thought that it would be better for it not to join in the criticism of this plan. On the other hand, the fact that strong international reactions were followed by criticism of the major political representatives from Skoplje, made it easier for the Albanian Government to remain reserved.
Under such conditions, Tirana thought that ignoring the whole case would be the best reply to the proposal of Macedonian academicians, although it is widely believed among their counterparts here - the Albanian academicians, that an agreement is needed because it seems that they too feel a moral obligation to pay back for their academic lunch in Skoplje by giving Tirana their political answer.
AIM Tirana
Arjan LEKA
Scores Flee Macedonia's Capital Posted June 9, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010609/8/ud8c.html
Saturday June 9, 6:35 PM
Scores Flee Macedonia's Capital
By MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Scores of people fled Macedonia's capital Saturday as police blocked roads around a suburb to stop ethnic Albanian militants from seizing control of territory dangerously close to Skopje.
``We are closely watching every movement in Aracinovo,'' police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said, adding that only civilians who want to leave the mostly ethnic Albanian suburb were being allowed through checkpoints.
As fear spread that Macedonia's ethnic conflict has come to within striking distance of the capital, just four miles away, about 200 ethnic Albanians from Skopje crossed into neighboring Kosovo. They said they were leaving as a precaution.
Local relief agencies who met them at the main border crossing at Djeneral Jankovic fed them and worked to reunite them with family members who had crossed into Kosovo earlier.
The European Union's security affairs chief, Javier Solana, held talks Saturday in downtown Skopje with top leaders of Macedonia's majority Slavs and minority ethnic Albanians in an attempt to avert a new escalation of the crisis.
Fighting erupted in February when militants from the country's sizable ethnic Albanian community took up arms, saying they were fighting for broader rights. The government, which contends they are separatists bent on dividing the country, launched an army offensive to drive them out of villages in the north of the country where the rebels are based.
On Friday, Macedonia's President Boris Trajkovski pledged to defeat the militants ``both politically and militarily.'' He said the Slav-dominated government would place the army and police under a single command to increase efficiency and speed up ``the neutralizing of the terrorists.''
Government forces on Saturday resumed their shelling of a rebel stronghold about 20 miles northeast of Skopje, currently the worst battle zone spreading over several ethnic Albanian villages not far from the border with Kosovo.
But the rebels have resisted the government offensives, and the appearance of uniformed members of the rebel National Liberation Army has triggered panic in Aracinovo, where most of the 1,000 Slavic residents also have fled, Pendarovski said.
Western governments have condemned the insurgents and have urged both sides to avoid an all-out war. Macedonia, which is about the size of Vermont, was formed when the former Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s. Until this year, it was the only former Yugoslav republic to have avoided bloodshed.
In his speech Friday in the 120-seat assembly, with the ambassadors of several EU and other countries in attendance, Trajkovski acknowledged that force alone would not end the insurgency. He pledged to jump-start dialogue with ethnic Albanian political leaders, who are part of the government but largely at odds with their Slavic coalition partners.
The president also mentioned a blueprint for a peace plan that would give amnesty to fighters who have not committed serious crimes. Officials said it envisages the deployment of international monitors, a greater inclusion of ethnic Albanians in state institutions and the ``reintegration into society'' of rebels who disarm.
``We must give them a chance to get out of the grip of the gang leaders'' who want to create a ``Greater Albania,'' Trajkovski said. ``The entire Republic of Macedonia is at stake.''
Ethnic Albanian rebels hold fast in Skopje suburb Posted June 9, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010609/1/uarl.html
Saturday June 9, 4:48 PM
Ethnic Albanian rebels hold fast in Skopje suburb
ARACINOVO, Macedonia, June 9 (AFP) -
Ethnic Albanian rebels were still firmly in control of the Skopje suburb of Aracinovo Saturday, a day after moving into the strategic town less 10 kilometres (six miles) from the centre of the Macedonian capital.
A special police checkpoint was preventing all but local traffic entering the ethnic Albanian part of the town, where a group of at least 10 heavily armed guerrillas of the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA) were seen controlling the road late Friday.
Interior minister spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said that at least 100, but possibly far more, guerrillas were in Aracinovo and had probably set up a checkpoint at the exit of the town.
"To have a checkpoint in a town of 10,000 people you need at least 100 men. Some sources say there are several hundred," Pendarovski told AFP.
Pendarovski said that 3,000 people, both Slav Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, had already fled the suburb, most heading for Kosovo but also for other cities inside Macedonia.
Police said the night passed calmly, with no reported incidents.
Control of the Albanian side of the town puts the rebels within mortar range of the edge of Skopje, while the city's airport lies just seven kilometres (four miles) to the southeast.
The rebel commander in Araconovo told AFP that his men had entered the town to protect the ethnic Albanian inhabitants, accusing the government forces of having fired mortar rounds near the town earlier in the day.
Commander Hoxha said his men had been joined by 163 armed villagers, and said his force was capable of moving on Skopje.
But he said he had no immediate intention of advancing, instead planning to stay put until the government opens a dialogue with the forces, which it has so far refused to do.
The authorities had cut off electricty to the town, he told AFP by telephone.
Fighting was also underway again around rebel-held villages north of Skopje, where the army has been battling for more than a month with tanks, artillery and tanks to drive the NLA out.
Around 12,000 ethnic Albanian civilians are hunkered down in cellars and shelters in a string of villages along the foothills of the Black Mountains, living in increasingly squalid conditions.
President Boris Trajkovski declared Friday that rebels of Macedonian origin would be given an amnesty if they laid down their weapons, but said their leaders, who Skopje says are troublemakers from neighbouring Kosovo, would be "eliminated."
The amnesty was set to be discussed during a visit with EU High Representative Javier Solana, who was meeting with government officials on Saturday.
Macedonia unveils peace plan as attacks target rebels Posted June 9, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/3/twmk.html
Saturday June 9, 4:11 AM
Macedonia unveils peace plan as attacks target rebels
By Kole Casule
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia's president outlined a plan on Friday to end a four-month insurgency by Albanian rebels as his armed forces ignored guerrilla calls for a ceasefire by launching fierce assaults on rebel positions.
"I'm addressing you at a critical point for the future of our state," President Boris Trajkovski told an emergency session of parliament, accusing the rebels of wanting to "divide society and take the country into chaos".
Trajkovski unveiled a three-point plan involving an overhaul of the security forces, measures to encourage rebels to disarm and an acceleration of political reforms to address grievances of ethnic Albanians, who make up 30 percent of the population.
The scheme was thin on details.
"We must give a chance to those who are ready to lay down their arms and integrate in the social life of the state," he said. "The plan for disarmament will be launched when conditions allow."
He added that he wanted to give those who were forced or cheated into joining the rebels "a chance to get out of the claws of the bandits". He stopped short of suggesting amnesty.
Parliament marked a minute's silence before the speech to mourn the deaths of five Macedonian soldiers killed on Tuesday in the worst clash since April. The conflict has raised fears that it could trigger a new Balkan war.
EU HAILS PLAN
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived in Skopje on Friday evening for talks with political leaders and praised Trajkovski's plan.
"The plan with three tracks is a very good one and it has our support," he said, adding that Macedonia needed simultaneous progress on political reform, security and disarmament.
The rebels say ethnic Albanians suffer discrimination by the majority Slavs in education, employment and language rights. Major western powers back a twin-track policy of a measured military response and political reforms.
Ending a lull in attacks, the Macedonian army launched artillery and helicopter attacks from early on Friday against villages to the northeast of the capital Skopje that the rebels have controlled for over a month.
Late in the day, the army claimed to have surrounded four villages in rebel hands. It said it had acted because rebels had cut off water to the 100,000 people of the town of Kumanovo and because it wanted to save civilians trapped in rebel villages.
From positions at Lopate, some four km (2.5 miles) from the rebel-held village of Slupcane, Reuters reporters saw repeated artillery strikes on houses and the hillside nearby. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers were seen moving towards the hamlet.
Asked why the army had attacked shortly after the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) declared a unilateral ceasefire and urged the Macedonian government to agree to a truce, Markovski said: "I don't negotiate with terrorists."
Commander Shpati of the NLA, reached by mobile phone, denied his forces had lost any ground in the swathe of territory they hold near mountains 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Skopje.
"We haven't budged an inch from our positions," the rebel commander said. He claimed two Macedonian tanks had been hit and were burning between the villages of Lipkovo and Orizare. Macedonia denied it had lost any men or equipment.
OVERHAUL ARMY
Trajkovski said he wanted police and armed forces to be under one command -- currently the police report to the Interior Ministry and the armed forces to the Defence Ministry and the president. The two ministers come from different parties.
He also urged more resolute action by politicians in the fractious unity government, which was formed in May. "This is no time for rivalry between political parties," he said.
There was speculation Friday's military attacks were a show of strength for domestic consumption by a Slav majority angered by the death of the five soldiers this week and wary of any hint of concessions from Trajkovski.
The ferocity of the assault suggested the army may be trying to retake territory to shore up public confidence. But while the army may claim advances in one area, the government's grip appeared to be loosening in another.
NLA guerrillas drove in a car through the village of Aracinovo, just 10 km (6 miles) from downtown Skopje, with a Kalashnikov assault rifle pointed out of a window, bringing the threat of war dangerously close to the city.
Police said there were 30 armed rebels in Aracinovo, dangerously close to the heart of the city.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov questioned the NLA truce.
"The call for a ceasefire may be seen by some as an olive branch, but of course it follows a fairly murderous attack a few days ago. So when you do that and call for a ceasefire, then the response to that it: put down your arms permanently," Robertson said.
A diplomat, adding details to Trajkovski's plan, said it foresaw the NLA being prepared to lay down their weapons, leave the area and enter Kosovo, the mainly Albanian-populated Serbian province across the border.
Albanian civilians living in squalor and fear in Macedonia Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/1/toug.html
Friday June 8, 8:46 PM
Albanian civilians living in squalor and fear in Macedonia
LIPKOVO, Macedonia, June 8 (AFP) -
Crushed dozens to a room with dwindling food supplies and practically no medicines, thousands of Albanians are surviving in fear in northern Macedonia's war zone.
In the cramped rooms of a building in Lipkovo, where an AFP reporter arrived on Friday, women wearing white "shamia" scarves sat in silence with their children.
The grandfather of 10-year-old Rejhane, who exhibited an arm injury, said that the boy had been injured on May 24, when Macedonian forces fired on the house they were staying in.
"In three or four days, we will have nothing to eat. The children eat twice a day, and we eat only once," said the grandfather, 64-year-old Shukri Zymbiri.
The scene was similar in a nearby house, where more than 150 people, mostly women and children, were crammed into three rooms.
One woman, 28-year-old Elme Morina, was nursing a three-week-old baby.
The air in the cramped rooms was almost unbreathable.
"The humanitarian situation risks becoming really catastrophic," said commander Hallushi, a young doctor who decided to join the National Liberation Army (NLA) guerrillas and combat the Macedonian army.
"The cases of diarrhoea, mostly among the children, have multiplied. Many of them have fever, and we have no ways of treating them," he said.
All the civilians said they refused to heed Macedonian government calls ofr them to leave Lipkovo.
"We do not believe in the promises of the Macedonians," Rexhia Kazimi insisted.
"If we are going to die, I want to die here, with my children," said an 80-year old woman, who said she represented her whole family.
In the nearby village of Otlja, where many houses showed scars from fighting, more than 200 people were sheltering in the cellar of the local mosque, sleeping on mattress laid directly on the ground.
Early Friday, Macedonian army tanks have opened fire on the positions held by the rebels of the self-styled National Liberation army (NLA), rising more concerns over the humanitarian situation for the villages trapped in this northern region.
Estimates of the total number of civilians hiding out in the area around Lipkovo and nearby Otlja range from 8,000 to 15,000. They have sought refuge in an area which normally has a population of only around 4,000.
The area is surrounded by Macedonian troops, who early on Friday launched a new offensive, using tanks and helicopters.
Around 120 people from the nearby village of Slupcane, which has been completely destroyed in the fighting, are among the civilians hiding out in the Lipkovo region.
The NLA's commander Shpati accused the Macedonian army of preventing aid from getting to the refugees, by refusing to give security guarantees to non-governmental organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
"The NLA always give guarantees to the ICRC," he said.
"It is the government forces who prevent them from bringing aid to the civilians," he accused.
Earlier this week and ICRC team came to Lipkovo during a brief ceasefire.
The team evacuated 66 people, but the ICRC said it could not evaluate the humanitarian situation, as it could spend only a short time in the area.
Macedonia backs off from state of war, renews offensive against rebels Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/1/ts4d.html
Friday June 8, 11:27 PM
Macedonia backs off from state of war, renews offensive against rebels
- Macedonia backed off from enacting war measures but renewed an offensive against ethnic Albanian strongholds in the north, killing at least three civilians, according to the rebels.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, the main supporter of the idea of declaring a state of war in the country, said he would give up the idea, after NATO, the United States and European countries said they opposed it.
"I realize there is no will" to introduce a state of war "among the majority of the political parties, so I will not insist on this," Georgievski told Macedonian state television.
But Georgievski insisted he "will not abandon the idea that we have to act in an energetic way against the terrorists," the term Skopje uses to describe ethnic Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Army (NLA).
As political debate heated up, government forces launched a new attack early Friday, using tanks and helicopters against several positions held by the guerrillas in the north.
A rebel leader told an AFP journalist that at least three civilians were killed and five injured in the village of Otlja when helicopters strafed houses where civilians were sheltering.
The information could not be independently confirmed.
Shooting and shelling started around 5:00 am (0300 GMT), an AFP reporter at the scene, who has managed to reach the rebel-control zone following a convoy carrying food for the guerrillas.
"The Macedonian army is trying to take over the villages, but it will not make it," one of the guerrilla leaders said.
Police sources said two grenades exploded at a site north of the capital Skopje, outside of the combat zone.
The call for a state of war, a move which would allow Skopje to rule by decree and trigger a full military mobilisation to crush the insurgents, came after the latest deadly attack by the guerrillas, in which five soldiers were killed near the northwestern town of Tetovo on Tuesday.
The idea, supported by Georgievski but opposed by President Boris Trajkovski, was also criticized by international officials, while the parliament was expected to discuss such a measure later Friday.
Trajkovski, who is said to be more reticent about the decree, has appealed repeatedly to the rebels to lay down their arms and is ready to offer a partial amnesty, excluding "leaders, ideologists and those responsible for massacres of soldiers and police", the sources said.
The ethnic Albanian rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army (NLA), promised "to respect the ceasefire on condition that the Macedonian army makes no provocation" from midnight on Thursday, a statement signed by the NLA's political representative, Ali Ahmeti, said.
On the diplomatic front, Javier Solana, the European Union's chief foreign policy representative, was due to travel Friday and Saturday to Skopje to promote inter-ethnic dialogue in Macedonia, an EU statement said.
HRW: Rioters Burn Albanian Homes in Bitola; Police Fail to Stop Violence, Some Actively Participate Posted June 8, 2001
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/06/Bitola0608.htm
Macedonia: Rioters Burn Albanian Homes in Bitola
Police Fail to Stop Violence, Some Actively Participate
(New York, June 8, 2001) Police in the Macedonian city of Bitola did not attempt to stop rioting crowds on Wednesday night, and some police officers actively participated in the violence, Human Rights Watch said today. As a result, dozens of ethnic Albanian homes and as many as 100 shops were burned by the mob.
"The anti-Albanian riots in Bitola present a dangerous escalation of the crisis in Macedonia," said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The local police must fulfill their responsibility to stop the violence, not exacerbate it."
Wednesday's anti-Albanian rioting broke out one day after five policemen, three of them from Bitola, were killed by insurgents of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) on Tuesday night outside the town of Tetovo, located 150 kilometers north of Bitola. Similar anti-Albanian riots broke out in the city in late April, when eight policemen, including four from Bitola, were killed in an NLA ambush near Tetovo. Bitola, located some 170 kilometers south of Skopje, is Macedonia's third largest city, and ethnic Albanians compromise about 15 percent of its population.
There has been no NLA fighting in or near the city of Bitola.
Human Rights Watch visited fourteen ethnic Albanian homes that had been gutted by fire during Wednesday night's riots and received information about other burned homes as well as extensive damage to the Albanian commercial district. The targeted homes appeared to have been carefully selected and included the homes of prominent ethnic Albanian politicians such as the Deputy Health Minister and the wealthiest ethnic Albanians.
A village mosque was also vandalized by the rioters. Grave markers were broken, and several graves had been broken open. The windows of the mosque were broken, and rioters had set the carpets inside the mosque on fire but did not succeed in burning it down. On the exterior wall of the mosque, rioters had painted several swastikas and written "Death to the Shiptars." The term "Shiptar" is an ethnic slur when used by non-Albanians.
The available evidence strongly suggests that the Bitola police did not take any actions to stop the anti-Albanian attacks and that a significant number of Bitola police officers, in and out of uniform, took part in the rioting. The police took no apparent action to enforce the 10 p.m. curfew it had announced for the town, and the rioting continued until after 1 a.m., according to official police statements. The rioting crowds claimed to be revenging the deaths of Bitola police officers that were ambushed near Tetovo.
Some of the witnesses reported that Bitola police officers had taken an active part in the rioting. According to Zini K. (see testimony below), at least one uniformed police officer and one uniformed soldier took part in the destruction and burning of his restaurant. According to Hamdi S., police officers stopped him from attempting to put out the fire to his home, and were shouting "Burn, burn for Macedonia."
Human Rights Watch called on the Macedonian Ministry of Interior to carry out an immediate investigation into the conduct of the Bitola police during the riots and urged the international community to assist and participate in the investigation.
"The conduct of the Bitola police in yesterday's riots is deeply worrying," said Cartner. "The Interior Ministry and the international community need to act now to prevent a further deterioration in police discipline."
Anti-Albanian sentiment in Bitola is rapidly growing into a campaign by extremists to rid Bitola of its ethnic Albanian population. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that the rioters had yelled slogans including "Death to Albanians," "Pure Bitola," "Albanians Out of Bitola," "Get Out Albanians," and other such statements. The rioters told some of the ethnic Albanians that they had a week to get out of town before being targeted again. Many ethnic Albanians have fled their homes in Bitola in the aftermath of Wednesday's riot because they are afraid of further attacks.
"Bitola's ethnic Albanians are scared to death of what could happen next," said Cartner. "Urgent action is required to protect this vulnerable population from further attacks."
The rioting in Bitola started at about 8 p.m. in the Albanian shopping and restaurant district of the town. Sixty-four-year-old Zini K. was in his restaurant when the crowds attacked: "They entered inside [the restaurant], destroyed the place and put it on fire. Then they went to another one and they burned it as well. I had a motorbike, and they put it inside the restaurant and burned it."
Zini K. managed to put out the fire, but returned the next day to find his restaurant looted and burned to the ground: "After I left, they came back to the restaurant and burned it again. It is now completely burned. Everything was looted -- our kitchen tools, tables, dishes, radio, telephone -- there is nothing left."
Zini K. then went home to Czar Samuel Street and was again faced with a very large mob shortly after 10 p.m. The mob, after damaging a mosque at the end of the street, proceeded carefully to select Albanian homes on the street and burned them down:
They had burned down my nephew's home and another relative's home. Our steel door was locked. They broke it down and started yelling, "Where are you Shiptar, Where are you Shiptar." I stepped back inside and when they saw me retreat they started throwing flames at the house. They also started burning the store in front. Then they went down a little lower and began burning another house.
Hamdi S., aged forty-two, was at home on the same street with his wife and three children when the mob approached:
At around 10:20 p.m., the lights in the houses suddenly went out. Then we heard a very big noise. First we could hear shooting. I said to my wife that they must have started burning the houses. When I went out I saw that my uncle's house was burning. After they burned his house, they came to my house. I took out my children, my eleven-year-old daughter first. At that moment, the first [Molotov] cocktail was thrown and I told my boys and my wife to run away.
The crowd started shouting, "You have one week to leave Bitola, and if you don't go to Albania we will kill you, we will make you disappear from this world." They were behaving so brutally. They were mostly from eighteen to fifty years old, no women. There were about 800 to 1,000 people in the street; the whole street from my house to the mosque was filled with people.... They were yelling "Death to the Albanians, Go to Albania" and they were also using dirty curses.
The crowd also beat some ethnic Albanians. Among those beaten was a fifty-year-old former local leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and his forty-seven-year-old wife. A witness who saw the beating described what he witnessed:
They broke down the fence and entered inside. First five people entered inside. They were breaking the tables inside, ripping up papers and pouring something out of a bottle. One of them set the home alight. A man and woman were on the top floor of the house when it started burning. The two were taken out of the house. They were taken into the basement and then I couldn't see them anymore. After fifteen or twenty minutes, they came back outside. They were covered with blood. The Macedonians were slapping their faces.
The beating victims had fled Bitola, but other neighbors confirmed the beatings to Human Rights Watch.
Civilians said killed as Macedonia forces attack rebels Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/1/tn38.html
Friday June 8, 6:58 PM
Civilians said killed as Macedonia forces attack rebels
MATEJCE MONASTERY, Macedonia, June 8 (AFP) -
Macedonian government forces on Friday used tanks and helicopters to launch a fresh attack on positions held by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, and a rebel leader said that at least three civilians were killed by the shelling.
The rebel leader told an AFP journalist that the casualties occurred when helicopters strafed houses where civilians were sheltering in the village of Otlja.
He also said at least one house sheltering civilians in the nearby village of Lipkovo was hit. The reports could not be independently verified.
Friday's early-morning attack came just hours after the guerrillas of the self-styled National Liberation army (NLA) offered a conditional ceasefire from midnight (2200 GMT) Thursday, and as Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said he would refrain from declaring a state of war in the country.
Shooting and shelling started around 5:00 am (0300 GMT), said an AFP reporter who reached the rebel-controlled zone with a convoy carrying food for the guerrillas.
The guerrillas and government forces have been engaged in violent clashes around the villages of Slupcane and Matejce, northeast from Skopje.
"The Macedonian army is trying to take over the villages, but it will not make it," one of the guerrilla leaders said.
He claimed that more than 30 army tanks were involved in the attack on the village. The rebels responded with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.
The rebel commander said that a house in the village of Lipkovo, where he said between 8,000 and 15,000 Albanian civilians were sheltering, had been hit by the government shelling.
"There are certainly casualties but we cannot for the moment approach the house," the rebel commander, Hassan, said.
More than sixty shells were fired on rebel positions around the villages of Slupcane, Otlja and Orizare, he said.
About a dozen very powerful explosions were heard from near a rebel-held Orthodox monastery in Matejce. Return fire from the NLA guerrillas was sparse.
Outside the monastery's church an Orthodox icon of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus still hung above the entrance. On one wall, the letters "UCK," the Albanian acronym for the NLA rebels, had been scrawled.
The monastery itself has been spared from clashes, as the Macedonians, who are Orthodox Slavs, have held back from shelling it, although there was a gaping hole in one of the side buildings.
"They shot at it from a helicopter," commander Hassan said.
It was difficult to estimate the exact amount of damage caused by the Macedonian attack, however.
An AFP reporter saw a fighter plane, apparently a Russian Mig-21, fly low over the area.
Macedonian army strikes out as others talk peace Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/3/tngd.html
Friday June 8, 7:10 PM
Macedonian army strikes out as others talk peace
By Sean Maguire
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia's army ignored a rebel call for a ceasefire and launched attacks on ethnic Albanian guerrilla positions on Friday, hours before a key speech by the country's president on peace proposals.
The army began artillery and helicopter assaults in the early morning against villages to the north-east of the capital Skopje that the rebels have controlled for over a month.
"This action is to defeat and disperse the terrorists and to return normal life to the villages," army spokesman Colonel Blagoje Markovski told Reuters.
Asked why the army had attacked shortly after the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) called a unilateral ceasefire and urged the Macedonian government to agree a truce, Markovski said: "I don't negotiate with terrorists."
There was speculation the attack was a show of strength for domestic consumption by a Slav majority angered by the death of five soldiers this week and ahead of a speech by President Boris Trajkovski that may offer concessions to the rebels.
In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov questioned the NLA truce.
"The call for a ceasefire may be seen by some as an olive branch but of course it follows a fairly murderous attack a few days ago. So when you do that and call for a ceasefire, then the response to that is: Put down your arms permanently," Robertson said.
In the rebel-held areas, thousands of trapped civilians cowered in their basements as shells slammed into houses.
An ethnic Albanian doctor in the village of Slupcane said the army was confining itself to long-range bombardment and had not launched the ground assault that would be needed to dislodge the guerrillas from their well dug-in positions.
"The NLA are still in their places," Fatmir Hasani told Reuters by mobile phone.
PEACE PLAN
In a major setpiece announcement Trajkovski was expected to tell his parliament in an afternoon speech of a plan to allow the rebels to disarm and withdraw, diplomats said. That could offer the best chance of avoiding civil war in Macedonia.
"It foresees the NLA being prepared to lay down their weapons, leave the area and enter Kosovo," one envoy said. The plan would not mention an amnesty, which is unworkable under Macedonian law, but might offer relief from prosecution.
That would be a bitter pill for the Slav majority to swallow, particularly after the death of five soldiers this week in NLA ambushes in mountains in northwestern Macedonia.
The deaths sparked violent riots on Wednesday in the southern city of Bitola, home to three of the dead, which saw dozens of ethnic Albanian homes and businesses burnt down.
A strong police presence on Thursday night kept violence at a minimum, although tear gas had to be used to disperse a crowd outside a Macedonian army barracks that was demanding to be given arms to let it defend the country.
SOLANA VISIT
Trajkovski's speech will be backed by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who will emphasise to squabbling politicians the need to improve the rights of minority Albanians and undercut support for the rebellion.
Solana was to arrive late in the day and stay overnight to push forward inter-ethnic dialogue, which so far has produced no concrete agreement on addressing the grievances of the Albanians, who make up around a third of the population.
Diplomats say the NLA is unlikely to accept Trajkovski's withdrawal plan unless it is convinced Macedonia's Slav elite is serious about equalising the status of the two communities.
"Nobody believes they'll pull back without reforms but they might if they can see progress. If reforms go quickly that might be enough to persuade them," a Western diplomat said.
The NLA says it is fighting to improve the rights of ethnic Albanians but Macedonia says rebels want to break up the state.
Trajkovski's plan is broadly modelled on measures NATO took to persuade ethnic Albanian rebels last month to quit an area of southern Serbia where they mounted a 16-month insurgency.
A NATO team was in Skopje this week to outline how the amnesty and arms plan worked in the nearby Presevo valley but the international community is keen for the Macedonian public to perceive the Trajkovski plan as a homegrown initiative.
Macedonia Rejects Cease-Fire Offer Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010608/8/tmgi.html
Friday June 8, 6:13 PM
Macedonia Rejects Cease-Fire Offer
By MISHA SAVIC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Government forces pounded rebel positions northeast of Macedonia's capital with heavy artillery fire Friday, despite a tentative cease-fire offer from ethnic Albanian insurgents.
The rebel stronghold - several villages about 20 miles northeast of Skopje - was targeted for much of the morning with ``all available means, including heavy artillery,'' Macedonian army spokesman Blagoja Markovski said.
Clouds of smoke and dust rose from the area. No information about possible casualties was immediately available.
Markovski said the army planned to later use helicopter gunships in what he termed a ``mop-up operation'' to dislodge the rebels.
The clashes have been going on since February, when militants from the country's sizable ethnic Albanian community took up arms, saying they are fighting for more rights.
But the government regards them as terrorists bent on carving out an ethnic Albanian mini-state and uniting with neighboring Albanian and Kosovo, the ethnic-Albanian dominated province in adjacent Yugoslavia.
With neither side achieving its goals, rebel spokesman Ali Ahmeti offered a cease-fire Thursday and reiterated demands for more influence for ethnic Albanians, who account for up to one-third of Macedonia's 2 million people.
Nikola Dmitrov, defense adviser to President Boris Trajkovski, promptly ruled out a deal with ``the terrorists who have shown they are ready to kill and destroy Macedonia.''
European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana is expected to arrive in Skopje later Friday to press again for a negotiated solution.
The death toll on the government side reached 20 with the recent killing of five government soldiers who had run into a rebel ambush in a northwestern battle zone.
Three of the soldiers were from the southern town of Bitola, where majority Slavs were outraged by the killings and engaged Wednesday night in revenge attacks against local ethnic Albanians. Police imposed a curfew, but of dozens of ethnic Albanian-owned homes and shops were destroyed.
A smaller crowd formed in Bitola again Thursday evening, chanting ``Macedonia, Macedonia'' and demanding arms to fight against the ethnic Albanian insurgents.
The mob destroyed another ethnic Albanian business before police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Macedonia's parliament was expected to convene Friday in a bid to try to resolve the protracted crisis that has beset the fledgling Balkan nation, formed when former Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski has called for the declaration of a state of war, which would give him broader authority to crack down on the insurgents.
But ethnic Albanian politicians who are part of the government have opposed the move, as have a number of Slav politicians, who suspect Georgievski's main motive is to gain more power without necessarily ending the crisis.
There also have been increasing calls from various quarters for Georgievski's resignation.
Western officials have argued against declaring a state of war, fearing it would anger ethnic Albanians and further divide society.
Talk of peace in Macedonia as rebels hold fire Posted June 8, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010607/3/tdkw.html
Friday June 8, 6:46 AM
Talk of peace in Macedonia as rebels hold fire
By Sean Maguire
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian guerrillas down arms on Friday in a unilateral ceasefire that may open the way to peace in Macedonia, racked by bitter strife since February.
The Macedonian President will do his part to end the crisis by proposing a plan to allow the rebels to disarm and withdraw, diplomats said. It will come in an afternoon speech to parliament, they said.
The initiative will be welcomed by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visits Macedonia to emphasise to squabbling politicians the need to improve the rights of minority Albanians and undercut support for the rebellion.
The surprise ceasefire by the rebels and the gathering momentum behind the disarmament plan offers the prospect of a reversal of the descent into chaos of recent days.
The deaths of five Macedonian soldiers in rebel ambushes on Tuesday and a wave of revenge attacks by Slavs against ethnic Albanian targets in the southern city of Bitola, home to three of the dead, had pushed ethnic tension to a new peak.
Now Western mediators like Solana can dare to hope there is a way of halting the slide to civil war that the small Balkan state appeared to be suffering.
Much depends on the behaviour of the rebel National Liberation Army, which is far from a coherent, well-organised fighting force all of whose members obey a central command.
"We'll see what happens in practice," said a source at NATO, which has been deeply worried at the crisis on the doorstep of the huge peacekeeping operation in Kosovo which it leads.
The NLA's ceasefire declaration is dependent on matching restraint from Macedonian forces, which it called on to join it in agreeing a bilateral truce. Macedonia has so far refused to talk to the NLA, referring to them as terrorists.
PLAN UNCERTAIN
The plan by President Boris Trajkovski may also meet an uncertain reception both domestically and from the rebels.
"It foresees the NLA being prepared to lay down their weapons, leave the area and enter Kosovo," one envoy said.
The plan would not mention an amnesty, which is unworkable under Macedonian law, but may offer relief from prosecution, a bitter pill for majority Slavs to follow, given the deaths their community has suffered at the hands of the rebels.
Before agreeing, the rebels will be looking for real evidence that the Slav elite is prepared to deliver reforms equalising the status of the two communities. There has been much talk of change but no concrete reform yet agreed.
"Nobody believes they'll pull back without reforms but they might if they can see progress. If reforms go quickly that might be enough to persuade them (the NLA)," a Western diplomat said.
Solana's task during meetings in Skopje late on Friday and on Saturday will be to persuade squabbling politicians to deliver the reforms needed to placate ethnic Albanians, without which the NLA will not give up their military struggle.
The NLA says it has been fighting to improve the rights of ethnic Albanians, up to a third of the population, but Macedonia says they are bent on destroying the state.
The rebels have impressed militarily, winning control of a swathe of villages nestling under mountains to the northeast of the capital Skopje and some mountain hinterland above the main ethnic Albanian town, Tetovo, in the northeast.
The Macedonian army, small and ill-equipped, has avoided close quarter clashes, preferring long-range shelling to pin down the guerrillas.
But the army has been remarkably restrained in recent days, perhaps to give the rebels the confidence to call a ceasefire.
EU combats war fever in Macedonia Posted June 8, 2001
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,502847,00.html
EU combats war fever in Macedonia
Solana appeals to leaders not to let rebel killings dictate hardline policies that could split country
Jonathan Steele Thursday June 7, 2001 The Guardian
The European Union appealed to Macedonia's government yesterday not to declare a state of war after ethnic Albanian rebels killed five soldiers, their deadliest attack for six weeks.
The EU fears that such a declaration could take the country closer to full-scale ethnic polarisation by provoking the two mainstream Albanian political parties to walk out of the fragile governing coalition.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, has visited Skopje repeatedly to try to keep the government together and press for faster reforms to give the country's Albanian minority greater rights.
"A declaration of war would only play into the hands of extremists and not help in resolving the crisis," he said yesterday
He spoke soon after a spokesman for the Macedonian prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski, declared that parliament should give the government emergency powers to rule by decree and order an all-out mobilisation of the army.
"We must finish with the illusion that four months of conflict can be solved only through dialogue. A strong military response is the way to achieve peace," the government spokeman, Antonio Milososki, said.
He also called for a declaration of loyalty by the Albanian political leaders: "They must state publicly what side they are on, that of the murderers or the state."
Mr Georgievski has also rowed back on a speech he made last week which offered to change the constitution and give Albanians more rights. He now says he was speaking "cynically" to show what pressure Macedonia was under from the international community and what "blackmail" it faced from the Albanian parties.
The deaths that provoked the latest crisis came when men of the self-styled National Liberation Army used heavy machine guns and mortars against troops bringing food to a garrison near Gajre, a village on a hill above the mainly Albanian city of Tetovo in the country's north-west.
Two soldiers were killed. Another three died in a second attack when they were escorting an ambulance carrying troops wounded in the initial ambush. One of the dead was an ethnic Albanian conscript.
The attacks above Tetovo show that the Albanian gunmen can operate successfully on two fronts. They already have the Macedonian army tied up in the region west of the northern city of Kumanovo.
For five weeks the army has been trying to dislodge gunmen from several villages in that area, including Matejce and Lipkovo.General Pande Petrovski, the deputy chief of staff, who was leading the operations near Kumanovo, is in hospital after being wounded by shrapnel this week.
The rebels' boldness comes in spite of the army's acquisition from Ukraine of four Russian-made helicopter gunships after the insurgency began in March. The army has plans to get two Russian "alligator" helicopters, four Mi-24 helicopters from Ukraine, and six American Hueys, according to the Macedonian newspaper Dnevnik.
The army averted a catastrophe on Monday when the rebels sent a horse-drawn cart laden with a boiler full of shrapnel towards a military post. The boiler had a slow-burning fuse. Troops suspicious of the rider-less vehicle fired at it. The boiler exploded. Had it got close, troop losses could have been in double figures.
EU and Nato leaders have been desperately urging restraint on both sides, fearing that heavy civilian casualties from the army's shelling of villages seized by the rebels, or big army losses in a single rebel incident, could destroy any chance of political unity and reform.
The coalition government is barely functioning and the two main Macedonian parties are already jockeying for votes in early elections due in January.
Suggesting that the election should be advanced to this September, Mr Georgievski started to blame the Social Democrats - even before the latest ambush - for not letting him order firmer military action.