Macedonian Unity Cabinet Back on Track -- for Now Posted May 29, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010529/wl/balkans_guerrillas_dc_49.html
Tuesday May 29 6:15 PM ET
Macedonian Unity Cabinet Back on Track -- for Now
By Andrew Gray
SKOPJE (Reuters) - A flagging national unity government formed to tackle Macedonia's ethnic Albanian guerrilla insurgency was back on its feet on Wednesday after some emergency first aid from the European Union (news - web sites).
But the next test for the multi-ethnic government was already on the horizon, as its members set a deadline of June 15 to achieve substantial progress on addressing tensions between the Slav majority and Albanians.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana brokered the deal on Tuesday to get the two-week-old coalition back on track after shuttling between Skopje and a meeting of EU and NATO (news - web sites) foreign ministers in the Hungarian capital Budapest.
Fighting between Macedonian armed forces and the ethnic Albanian guerrillas continued on Tuesday, as the two sides fought in the northern village of Matejce and for control of other villages in the area.
The Macedonian army said three of its soldiers had been wounded in the latest fighting.
The West sees the national unity government of the main Slav and Albanian parties as a key plank in its strategy of isolating the guerrillas and forcing them to end their campaign.
But the government was plunged into crisis last week after leaders of the two ethnic Albanian parties agreed on a common platform with the rebels' political chief Ali Ahmeti.
The pact was met with horror by the West and ethnic Slav politicians who called on Albanian leaders to repudiate it.
Although the Albanians did not quite go that far, a statement issued by the government partners after their meeting with Solana made clear it was off the agenda for now.
It said the ``status of the document in question is no longer relevant'' and only democratically elected representatives could decide the country's future.
``I would like to express my satisfaction with the successful end of this meeting, at which all political leaders present expressed their commitment to work together for the wellbeing of all Macedonian citizens,'' President Boris Trajkovski said.
SOLANA BUYS TIME
The guerrillas say their five-month-old insurgency is aimed at securing greater rights for Macedonia's one-third Albanian minority, who claim they face state-backed discrimination in education and employment.
While taking a tough line against what they call terrorism, and ruling out negotiations with rebels, Western diplomats have also urged Slavs to improve opportunities for ethnic Albanians.
Solana's rescue mission has for now averted a descent into full-scale civil war that many fear would accompany the collapse of the government of national unity.
But his efforts are unlikely to have an immediate impact on the battlegrounds of northern Macedonia where rebels have kept up resistance to government bombardments.
The guerrillas on Tuesday returned fire in the face of an army assault by artillery and helicopter on their positions in Matejce, some 25 km (15 miles) northeast of Skopje.
A defense ministry spokesman said around 2,000 civilians fled their homes in and around Matejce on Tuesday morning on foot or by car and tractor.
The United Nations (news - web sites) refugee agency UNHCR estimates that up to 10,000 civilians could be trapped by fighting in villages in the hills north of the capital Skopje.
Thousands of villagers have headed for rebel-held Lipkovo, out of reach of humanitarian agencies, where conditions are deteriorating rapidly, said local mayor Hysamedin Halili.
``We are running low on food and water,'' he told Reuters by telephone. ``We have reduced food rations to the elderly people so there is more for the others.''
A rebel leader said fighting would continue unless politicians accepted the terms of the peace plan agreed between the ethnic Albanian party leaders and the guerrillas in secret in the Kosovo city of Prizren on May 22.
``I think Macedonia can now only take two roads, either the peace and concrete dialogue offered by the Prizren agreement or the prospect of a civil war,'' the commander named Sokoli said.
RFE/RL: NEW TENSIONS IN MACEDONIA Posted May 29, 2001
http://www.rferl.org/balkan-report/
NEW TENSIONS IN MACEDONIA. A 23 May meeting in Kosova between Ali Ahmeti, the political representative of the ethnic Albanian fighters' National Liberation Army -- or UCK -- and the chairmen of Macedonia's two main Albanian parties has sent shock waves through the government in Skopje as well as the international community.
It was an OSCE diplomat, Robert Frowick, who allegedly facilitated the meeting between the UCK's Ahmeti and Arben Xhaferi and Imer Imeri, the respective chiefs of the Democratic Party of Albanians, or PDSH, and the Party of Democratic Prosperity, or PPD. Frowick, whose title is "Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office" for Macedonia, was summoned to Bucharest on 24 May to report to his boss, the OSCE's current chairman, Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana. He has not returned to Skopje.
Frowick has been a diplomat for almost four decades and an ambassador since the mid-1980s. He was closely connected to the so-called Helsinki Process (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) in the 1970s and 1980s, as well to the OSCE's activities in the Balkans in the 1990s.
At their meeting in Kosova, the three ethnic Albanian leaders reportedly called for "joint efforts" to change the Macedonian Constitution to provide equal rights to the Albanian community, estimated to comprise from one-quarter to one-third of the country's two million people. The three were also reported to have appealed to Macedonia's new national unity government to declare a cease-fire in the fighting with the UCK and to seek to resolve the crisis by peaceful means.
Reports of the agreement triggered denunciations not only by the Macedonian government, but by the United States, the European Union, NATO, and the OSCE. All agreed there can be no negotiations with the ethnic Albanian fighters, whom the government calls "terrorists."
On 25 May, Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski characterized the agreement between the UCK's Ahmeti and ethnic Albanian party leaders Xhaferi and Imeri as an act of war: "This [agreement] means that the [ethnic] Albanians have declared war against the Macedonian people."
Georgievski said the previous day that the deal means "the Macedonian security forces must defend the country's territories without mercy." Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski subsequently announced a major offensive by the military against the UCK.
Trajkovski had previously urged Xhaferi and Imeri -- whose parties are part of the national unity government -- to renounce the agreement with the UCK. He said that if they fail to renounce that deal, "it will be impossible to work together."
In response, Xhaferi said he "stands by the [common political] platform" and that he did not act behind the Macedonian government's back. Imeri said the Macedonian government had actually encouraged the two Albanian parties to contact the UCK. He added: "We did it for peace, and peace is very near."
In a statement, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Michael Einik rejected "any kind of attempt to bring the so-called UCK into the negotiating process." Einik urged the PPD and the PDSH to renounce their agreement with the guerrillas and to demonstrate their sincere commitment to be part of what he called the "legitimate political dialogue that is now underway." Einik concluded: "There should be no accommodations made for violence or violent groups."
The OSCE mission in Skopje also issued a statement reaffirming the organization's commitment "to adhere totally to the long-standing positions of the international community that ethnic Albanian armed groups calling themselves the UCK do not have any legal status and in the present situation cannot be considered as partners in a political dialogue."
The OSCE representative in Skopje, Carlo Ungaro, said that Frowick had been "acting on his own" and not on behalf of the 55-member organization. The Macedonian-language press quoted unnamed officials as saying Frowick is no longer welcome in Macedonia. Unnamed diplomats in Vienna told RFE/RL that the veteran diplomat's career with the OSCE in Macedonia is finished.
According to a Kosova Albanian TV station, KTV, the accord reiterates ethnic Albanian demands for amendments to the Macedonian Constitution that would grant equal rights to the Albanian community. The TV report said the agreement spells out, as conditions for peace, "the use of the Albanian language as one of the official languages in Macedonia, the expansion of local government competencies, the full secularization of the constitution, the establishment of a consensual democracy on issues relating to national [that is, ethnic] interests, and the right to free communication in Albanian cultural areas."
The same report says that Ahmeti, Xhaferi, and Imeri agreed to cooperate to "reform the Republic of Macedonia into a democratic state for all its citizens and all national [ethnic] communities." They said they reached consensus on the need "to preserve the integrity and the multiethnic character of Macedonia," noting that there are no solutions for Macedonia's problems based on purely ethnic or territorial criteria.
The report also said the men warned that any attempt to redistribute territories along ethnic lines would harm Macedonian citizens and peace in the region. The declaration was reported to have flatly stated: "There are no military solutions for the problems in Macedonia." The document reportedly concludes by referring to the possibility of integrating demobilized UCK fighters into civilian society, including government posts.
But several politicians and diplomats in Skopje say that the agreement called for the UCK to stop fighting in exchange for an amnesty guaranteed by the two Albanian parties in the government coalition. PDSH and PPD politicians insist they had received the tacit approval of ethnic Macedonian government parties to reach the deal with the UCK. But the Macedonian parties have since expressed outrage, alleging the talks were held without their knowledge.
Just what role Frowick actually played is far from clear. He appears to have tried to urge Xhaferi and Imeri to persuade the UCK to stop fighting and resolve differences with the Macedonians politically.
At a news conference in Skopje in mid-May, Frowick told reporters that he had been engaged in intensive consultations with Xhaferi, the PPD leadership, several Kosovar Albanian leaders -- including Ibrahim Rugova, Hashim Thaci, Ramush Haradinaj, and General Agim Ceku, who heads of the Kosova Protection Force -- and Albanian Prime Minister Ilir Meta. He said these talks were aimed at persuading the UCK "that it is time to stop the armed struggle."
At that time, Frowick accused the UCK's leadership of "defying this search for peace with justice" and of speaking in support of political reforms, while "stubbornly refusing to pull back from armed confrontation."
In a twist of irony, Frowick concluded: "Let me convey a message to Ali Ahmeti: The ethnic Albanian insurgents must choose now, at this pivotal moment, between the pathway to peace with justice or continuing its [sic] present course toward an escalating war. Only by choosing peace, and pursuing political objectives through political dialogue, can the door to progress and legitimacy be opened."
Some Macedonian cabinet members have demanded the resignations of Xhaferi and Imeri as a result of their talks with Ahmeti. Both have rejected those calls, but aides say that Xhaferi -- who is ailing -- is likely to quit his post as party chairman within a month.
In the latest development, Javier Solana, who is the EU's chief foreign and security policy envoy, arrived in Skopje on 28 May to urge leaders of both major ethnic groups to "resume political dialogue." (Jolyon Naegele)
QUOTATIONS OF THE WEEK: "The real problem is that neither [Macedonian President Boris] Trajkovski nor the government is committed to an open dialogue with the Albanians." -- Unnamed NATO diplomat, quoted in the "Financial Times" of 28 May.
"The important thing is that the killing stops and that the civilians are saved." -- PPD leader Imer Imeri. Quoted by AP in Skopje on 28 May.
Macedonian Government Abuses in Runica: Village International Community Should Push for a Full Investigation Posted May 29, 2001
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/05/runica0529.htm
Macedonian Government Abuses in Runica
Village International Community Should Push for a Full Investigation
(New York, May 29, 2001) Macedonian government forces arbitrarily shelled and burned the ethnic Albanian village of Runica and beat some of its civilian inhabitants last week, Human Rights Watch stated today. Six members of one family were wounded by mortar fire and one man was killed. Seven others civilians were severely beaten.
"Our investigations show that Macedonian forces burned civilians' homes and beat some villagers last week in the village of Runica. These crimes must be impartially investigated, and those responsible brought to account."
Holly Cartner
Executive Director
Europe and Central Asia division
"Our investigations show that Macedonian forces burned civilians' homes and beat some villagers last week in the village of Runica," said Holly Cartner, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "These crimes must be impartially investigated, and those responsible brought to account."
Human Rights Watch located and interviewed witnesses from Runica, a mountain hamlet with approximately 100 inhabitants near Kumanovo, who had been displaced inside Macedonia or fled to Kosovo. Interviewed separately, they provided highly consistent accounts of the attack on the village.
The government's attack began without warning around 4:00 a.m. on May 21 with mortars, tank shells, and helicopter fire, all of the villagers said. Most of the approximately ten families that lived in the hamlet fled immediately into the mountains to escape the shelling.
About 150 meters from their home, the Hyseni family was struck by what is believed to have been a mortar. Six members of the family were wounded, as well as another villager, Mexhit Hamide, aged thirty-one and father of three. He died four days later from his injuries.
Villagers carried three of the wounded through the mountains for ten hours to the border with Kosovo. Three men then returned to retrieve the other three wounded they had left behind. When they arrived back at Runica, they testified, virtually the entire village of approximately fifty houses had been burned to the ground, including the mosque and the school, which had been constructed with help from the humanitarian organization Caritas.
One family with four daughters did not flee the village during the May 21 attack because they could not evacuate their elderly and infirm father. When Macedonian government ground forces entered the village, the family was caught and badly beaten. Macedonian forces beat all members of the family, and twice doused the thirty-one year old son with gasoline and threatened to set him on fire. The family was walked down the only street of the village and continuously beaten and kicked while the Macedonian forces burned most of the houses in the village with gasoline. The men and women of the family showed Human Rights Watch researchers the deep bruises they had obtained from the beatings, and the bloody clothes they had worn that day.
Fifty-six year old Advie Hamidi, the mother of the family, testified to Human Rights Watch:
[The Macedonian forces] broke down the door and right away started beating us, kicking us with their feet and with the butts of their guns. I don't know how many times I was hit, with fists, with guns, they dragged us by the hair and dragged us. Then they put gasoline on the house and lit it on fire. Then they took us out in the street. They burned all the houses, the mosque and the school. When we reached the bottom of the village, they put the barrel of an automatic rifle in my husband's mouth. He was lying down and they stepped on his chest, almost killing him. Then they took my eldest son. They twisted his arms [behind his back] almost breaking them Then they hit him in the head with a rifle and a lot of blood started flowing. Then they took the can of gasoline [and poured it on him]. Me and all my daughters rushed to him to try and protect him. From the morning hours until 11:30 a.m., they never stopped beating us.
All of the villagers, interviewed separately, vehemently claimed that the Albanian insurgency-the National Liberation Army (NLA)-had never been present in the village, although this could not be confirmed by Human Rights Watch. Other villages in the region, such as Slupcane and Vaksince, had an NLA presence.
Human Rights Watch called on the Macedonian government to open an official and impartial investigation into the incident. The European Union, U.S. government, and OSCE, should encourage and participate in this inquiry.
"The government's actions are at odds with its legal obligations and stated intent to minimize civilian casualties," added Ms. Cartner. "The U.S. and European governments should condemn the ill-treatment of the villagers of Runica by Macedonian forces and push for and participate in a full inquiry into these serious abuses."
Nato urges Macedonia restraint Posted May 29, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1356000/1356661.stm
Tuesday, 29 May, 2001, 11:46 GMT 12:46 UK
Nato urges Macedonia restraint
Macedonian forces are bombarding rebel-held villages
Nato Secretary General George Robertson has urged Macedonia to show restraint in its battle with ethnic Albanian rebels.
We ask the government in Skopje to exercise firmness with restraint but flexibility with their politics
Lord Robertson
His comments came as security forces said the conflict had entered a decisive phase.
Nato and the European Union have supported Macedonia in its battle with the National Liberation Army (NLA).
But Mr Robertson said Macedonia must also respect the concerns of its ethnic Albanian minority.
'Too much hatred'
Mr Robertson told Nato foreign ministers in the Hungarian capital, Budapest: "We ask the government in Skopje to exercise firmness with restraint, but flexibility with their politics in order that a solution can be found to this troubled situation."
More than 9,500 refugees have fled to neighbouring Kosovo
He added, referring to the Balkans in general: "There is still too much hatred and revenge and still too much readiness by some to resort to force and violence in pursuit of the nationalistic illusion."
He spoke as EU foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, briefed Nato following talks with political leaders in Macedonia.
The country's national unity cabinet has been deadlocked since last week, when ethnic Albanian leaders signed a peace deal with the rebels.
Macedonian leaders insist that the ethnic Albanian politicians must renounce the deal before co-operation can resume.
They refuse to negotiate with the rebels, who they say are "terrorists".
Mr Solana is returning to Skopje for further talks on ending the crisis.
Key phase
Latest reports from northern Macedonia speak of continued fighting around rebel-held strongholds.
Government troops are said to have entered Matejce
Government troops are said to have entered one of the villages, Matejce, but were meeting resistance from the insurgents.
Matejce, along with Vaksince and Slupcane, have been severely damaged by artillery and helicopter attacks.
Some civilians have been hiding in basement shelters for up to three weeks, and thousands are still pinned down in rebel strongholds like Slupcane and Lipkovo.
"We are entering a delicate, key phase in our action" to drive out the rebels, a senior police official told the Associated Press news agency on Tuesday.
"The next 48 hours will be decisive."
Civilians trapped
The clashes in northern Macedonia first began in February and flared with renewed intensity nearly a month ago, endangering thousands of civilians trapped in rebel-held villages.
The UN refugee agency estimated on Monday that 9,500 people had fled to neighbouring Kosovo to escape the fighting since it began.
An additional 2,500 others had fled to other parts of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.
The Red Cross say they have been unable to reach thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting.
Macedonia fighting flares as Solana rushes back Posted May 29, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010529/3/qcty.html
Tuesday May 29, 10:36 PM
Macedonia fighting flares as Solana rushes back
By Andrew Gray
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonian forces blasted pockets of rebel resistance in a northern village on Tuesday as European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana rushed back to the Balkan country to try to contain the crisis.
The Macedonian army used helicopter gunships and artillery in response to fire from ethnic Albanian guerrillas in the village of Matejce in the hills north of the capital Skopje.
Smoke rose from Matejce as reinforcements of government troops arrived in jeeps and an armoured personnel carrier.
Solana said he would try to mend divisions within the fragile, ethnically-mixed Macedonian government which is battling the rebels.
After meeting Macedonia's majority Slav and minority ethnic Albanian political leaders on Monday, Solana flew overnight to Hungary's capital, Budapest, to brief the NATO alliance on his latest crisis mission to the region.
He then returned to Skopje on Tuesday afternoon and resumed talks aimed at preventing the collapse of the national unity government he helped set up earlier this month.
"I hope we'll have a result and the result, as you know, is very simple -- it is to try and overcome the difficulties of the past days," Solana told Reuters Television in Budapest.
Western leaders fear Macedonia could slide into civil war if the coalition breaks up, leaving the Slav-dominated security forces to handle an ethnic Albanian insurgency by military means alone and without the consent of the Albanian minority.
CIVILIANS FLEE
More civilians caught in the cross fire fled their homes on Tuesday. The Macedonian army reported some 800 people had left Matejce and its surroundings on foot or in tractors and cars.
A Reuters correspondent saw a column of some 100 people, mainly women and children, heading in the direction of Skopje, around 25 km (15 miles) to the southwest.
Police said the men had been taken to a police station to take a paraffin test to establish if they had used firearms.
Most of those displaced were ethnic Albanians from among a string of rebel-held villages in the northern hills which Macedonian forces are trying to recapture.
One family from the mixed village of Matejce was ethnic Slav.
"A shell destroyed the roof of our house last week and we moved into the house of our Albanian neighbours," said 70-year-old Lence Tasic.
She said the guerrillas had moved in from the mountains and took positions in the village.
"We told them to move out of the village. We told them that if they wanted to fight they should do so outside the village," Tasic said.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday up to 10,000 civilians may be trapped in villages in northern Macedonia and said continued fighting could trigger a "new major humanitarian crisis in the Balkans".
SOLANA CHANGES TACK
Relations within Macedonia's crisis coalition have soured since last week ethnic Albanian leaders signed a controversial peace pact with guerrillas.
Western governments joined Slav parties in expressing horror at the peace document and called on ethnic Albanian political leaders to renounce it.
But diplomatic sources said the West had now dropped this demand and Solana was trying to set the pact aside and broker a new peace accord between ethnic Slav and Albanian leaders to keep the national unity government together.
Solana said he was "optimistic" the coalition partners could patch up their differences.
"We have to make it very clear: there is no possibility of any dealings with the NLA, the extremists," he said referring to the National Liberation Army which has fought a five-month guerrilla campaign for improved ethnic Albanian rights.
"At the same time, the political process has to continue," Solana added.
Alliance diplomats expect NATO and the EU to issue a joint statement on Wednesday -- the first of its kind -- strongly condemning ethnic Albanian extremism.
But while taking a tough line against what they describe as terrorism, Western diplomats have also urged Macedonia's Slav majority to improve opportunities for ethnic Albanians.
E.U. Official Seeks Macedonia Talks Posted May 28, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010528/ts/macedonia_90.html
Monday May 28 12:37 PM ET
E.U. Official Seeks Macedonia Talks
By JOVANA GEC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - A top European official urged political leaders Monday to resume talks to end Macedonia's crisis, even as government forces shelled ethnic Albanian strongholds to oust rebels from the border area near Kosovo.
Javier Solana, the European Union (news - web sites) foreign policy chief, hopes to strike a deal to end a political deadlock that has blocked the work of Macedonia's recently formed coalition government.
The crisis erupted last week when the main ethnic Albanian parties signed a peace agreement with the militants, angering the Slavic partners in the Cabinet and triggering fears that the government could fall apart.
``I came here to talk to the government and leaders of different political formations to see how we can resume political dialogue, which I think is very important for this country,'' Solana said after arriving in Macedonia.
As Solana entered meetings, Macedonian helicopter gunships and artillery pounded rebel positions in three villages in northern Macedonia, setting houses on fire.
The attacks on Slupcane, Matejce and Orizare were part of a government offensive aimed at driving out the insurgents from the northern villages. So far the government has recaptured a few villages, but many remain in rebel hands.
Earlier Monday, a military spokesman, Col. Blagoja Markovski, claimed that the militants were expelled from Matejce late Sunday. He added that special police were moving house to house to make sure nobody was hiding.
Still, in a sign that the rebels were resisting the government offensive, Matejce came under government artillery fire again on Monday after the militants apparently responded with gunfire. Government sources speaking on condition of anonymity said three rebels were captured in the fighting.
The rebels from the National Liberation Army took up arms in February, saying they want more rights for Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as one-third of the population. The government refuses to negotiate with the rebels, calling them terrorists and accusing them of trying to carve out an ethnic Albanian mini-state.
The United States and its allies have supported the Macedonian government in its attempts to curb the rebellion. But they have also encouraged talks and urged military restraint.
Solana said he has ``some ideas'' on how to help end the government deadlock in Macedonia, but refused to give any details.
Macedonia's Slavic politicians insist that the ethnic Albanian leaders should publicly renounce their deal with the rebels so that cooperation can resume. The deal reportedly provided that the rebels would agree to stop fighting in exchange for amnesty guarantees and the power to veto political decisions on ethnic Albanian rights.
The clashes in the past few weeks have left thousands of civilians trapped in the rebel-held villages. International aid groups have reportedly tried to negotiate their evacuation, but the fighting has stymied those attempts.
On the eve of Solana's visit, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, Mike Einik, met with ethnic Albanian politicians to discuss ways out of the crisis. Einik also met with Macedonian government officials earlier Sunday, a source close to the leadership said.
The United States and its allies fear that a large-scale war in Macedonia could spill into other countries in the Balkans.
Macedonia falls quiet as watchdog says refugees mistreated Posted May 28, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010527/3/q6lg.html
Sunday May 27, 8:38 PM
Macedonia falls quiet as watchdog says refugees mistreated
By Anatoly Verbin
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Guns were silent on Macedonia's battlefields on Sunday but a human rights watchdog said it had registered cases of ethnic Albanian refugees being mistreated by government security troops.
"We have registered a lot of cases when men were beaten up. In some cases youths and women were also beaten," Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "We are very concerned about it."
He said people had been roughed up both in the northeastern Kumanovo area where government troops have been fighting the National Liberation Army (NLA) rebels since early this month, and in northwestern Tetovo, a battlefield in March.
When the rebels launched the insurgency at the beginning of the year, they prompted widespread fears of a new Balkan war.
Reporters in Kumanovo said they had heard no shelling or fighting since morning, a sharp contrast with Saturday when the whole area held by the rebels came under fire.
Government officials were not immediately contactable.
An NLA commander calling himself Shpati told Reuters by telephone that civilians, now concentrated in the village of Lipkovo, were in need of help.
"Food is scarce. There is no water and medicines are running out," he said. He reiterated that guerrillas wanted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to help get the refugees to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.
"It is very quiet. A very strange silence. Perhaps it is a ceasefire to help the civilian population get out."
The Red Cross declined comment on its plans for Sunday, saying it needed discretion for the sake of civilians.
EXODUS STARTED ON THURSDAY
The West has backed Macedonia in its battle against the rebels but urged an appropriate use of force, fearing that big civilian casualties would split the national unity government formed two seeks ago by the main Slav and Albanian parties.
A senior diplomatic source in Skopje said efforts were under way to find a solution to the crisis triggered last week by a "peace deal" the mainstream ethnic Albanian leaders concluded in secret with a guerrilla political chief.
The departure of civilians would make the rebels "extremely vulnerable" in their strongholds as the army, which has accused the insurgents of using the villagers as "human shields", would be free to use more force, the source said.
Villagers started leaving the area on Thursday, the day the army launched a ground assault, after hiding in basements for more than three weeks in villages which were turned into rebel strongholds and bombarded by helicopters, tanks and artillery.
An estimated 10,000 villagers lived in the area before the fighting started on May 3.
About 2,000 refugees fled north into Serbia on Thursday and on Friday 1,000 or so left the village of Vakcince, which was retaken by government troops at the end of the day. On Saturday, smaller groups left two other villages which came under fire.
When villagers left Vakcince, the men were separated from the women and taken away in buses. In 1999, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians flooded tiny Macedonia, which already had a one-third Albanian minority, Skopje came in for international criticism over its treatment of the refugees.
The situation later improved with foreign aid.
REFUGEES SAY MACEDONIANS ATTACK
Last week, a group of refugees said masked Macedonian troops had attacked their remote hamlet of Runica, evicted them and set fire to their homes. Some were bruised. It was impossible to verify their account and Skopje denied the charge.
Macedonia vowed on Saturday to drive the National Liberation Army rebels out of the country after recapturing two villages.
The guerrillas' political leader Ali Ahmeti told Macedonia's private A1 television station the rebels would fight on until they were allowed to join peace talks and realise their demands for change.
Leaders of Macedonia's Slav majority, backed by Western governments, have rejected their demands.
The NLA says it is fighting to end discrimination against ethnic Albanians by Macedonia's Slav majority, but government officials and the West have condemned them as terrorists.
More Heavy Fighting in Macedonia Posted May 28, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010528/8/q9mr.html
Monday May 28, 10:36 PM
More Heavy Fighting in Macedonia
By JOVANA GEC, Associated Press Writer
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Helicopter gunships blasted rebel positions Monday and the Macedonian army claimed a new success in its push to clear the northern highlands of the ethnic Albanian insurgents, saying they were forced to cede a village stronghold to government troops.
However, heavy government shelling of the village of Matejce resumed late in the morning, suggesting the insurgents continued to resist.
A military spokesman, Col. Blagoja Markovski, said the militants were expelled from the village of Matejce late Sunday and that special police units were moving house to house to make sure none were hiding out.
``We kicked them out of the village. They scattered up in the hills,'' Markovski said. But government artillery later resumed heavy shelling of Matejce on Monday and also fired at Slupcane, another rebel-held village near the rugged border with Kosovo.
The attacks on Slupcane and Matejce have hindered efforts by international aid groups to help thousands of civilians trapped in the fighting. Monday's assaults came hours before a key European official was due in Macedonia in an effort to end the crisis.
Backed by helicopter gunships, government artillery fired at nearby Slupcane and Orizare, another rebel-held village. Two MIL-24 choppers swooped over Slupcane, hitting it with missiles and setting houses on fire.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will try to negotiate a way out of the government deadlock which occurred after two ethnic Albanian politicians made a deal with the rebels, angering their Slavic partners in the leadership.
On arrival, Solana said his main purpose was to push both Slavic and ethnic Albanian political parties in the coalition to ``resume political dialogue.''
Revelations of a political deal pushed Macedonia's leadership into turmoil, just weeks after ethnic Albanian and Slavic politicians forged a national unity government and raised hopes that further violence might be avoided.
The fighting, meanwhile, stymied hopes of helping the civilians who have been cowering in basements for three weeks.
Macedonian media and government sources reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross was trying to negotiate an evacuation of civilians from the besieged villages, but the ICRC refused to comment.
It was not immediately clear how many people are still trapped in the rebel-held villages. Up to 3,000 have crossed into Serbia, Yugoslavia's larger republic in the past weeks, while an army spokesman said that more then 1,300 left the area in the past 24 hours. Thousands more have crossed into Kosovo since the crisis began earlier this month.
The U.S. ambassador in Macedonia, Mike Einik, met with ethnic Albanian politicians on Sunday to discuss ways out of the crisis.
Siding with the Macedonian government, which says no deals can be made with the ``terrorists,'' international officials have urged the two key ethnic Albanian leaders to renounce their deal with the rebels.
The rebels say they are fighting for greater rights for Macedonia's minority ethnic Albanians. The government contends they are bent on seizing territory and carving out an ethnic Albanian mini-state.
After talks with Einik, one of the ethnic Albanian leaders, Imer Imeri, spoke of a new U.S.-European initiative to end the crisis.
``The important thing is that the killing stops and that the civilians are saved,'' Imeri said. He added that the agreement he signed with the militants ``had some positive connotations.''
The deal reportedly provided that the rebels would agree to stop fighting in exchange for amnesty guarantees and the power to veto political decisions on ethnic Albanian rights.
Einik also met with Macedonian government officials earlier in the day, a source close to the leadership said.
The United States and its allies fear that a large-scale war in Macedonia could spill to other countries in the Balkans.
EU foreign policy chief aims to ease crisis in Macedonia Posted May 28, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010528/1/q7xj.html
Monday May 28, 9:56 AM
EU foreign policy chief aims to ease crisis in Macedonia
SKOPJE, May 28 (AFP) -
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana was due here Monday in a bid to ease the crisis inside Macedonia's national unity government after fierce fighting Sunday.
The Macedonian army responded to a counter-attack by ethnic Albanian rebels with a renewed artillery bombardment against rebel villages in the north. The government is split over using such force to quell the rebel threat.
Solana, who has visited the conflict-wracked country several times in recent months, was to hold fresh talks with President Boris Trajkovski, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and other political leaders.
"He will urge all parties to pursue and intensify efforts to restore security in the country and to achieve early progress in inter-ethnic understanding," his office said in a statement.
Sunday's fighting will have done nothing to ease tensions within Macedonia's shaky coalition government, formed May 13 to present a united front against the rebels who are fighting for increased rights for the ethnic Albanian minority.
The ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slav halves of the coalition vehemently disagree over the use of force to defeat the rebels.
Georgievski has accused his coalition partners of siding with "terrorists" after the two main ethnic Albanian parties met the rebels' political chief to agree on a "common action" to promote their cause.
Both leaders met with US diplomats in Skopje on Sunday as the international community continued to pressure them to drop their links with the rebels.
The security forces sent reinforcements to the village of Matejce as ethnic Albanian rebels broke out south from their stronghold in Slupcane, 16 miles (25 kilometres) north of Skopje, and threatened to over-run a police station.
Government forces claimed to have broken the morale of the rebels by killing one of their commanders in an offensive on Friday which captured two villages, but their own problems became visible when two police commanders were sacked.
Civilians continued to flee the area during the day as the army abandoned a unilateral ceasefire called late Saturday to allow their evacuation as tanks and artillery once more pounded Slupcane, Matejce and nearby Otlja.
Macedonian state television reported that "heavy fighting" had escalated overnight Sunday in Matejce, a village west of Kumanovo, the main town in northern Macedonia, after an attack on a police station.
A group of some 40 ethnic Albanian villagers said they had fled Matejce during the shooting. One of them said that a part of the village was controlled by the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA).
Meanwhile, an AFP reporter in the nearby village of Ljubodrag saw a convoy of around 20 armoured vehicles, three T-55 tanks and a busload of policemen, heading towards Matejce.
The tanks took position in the fields near the village, opening fire around 3:30 pm (1330 GMT). Later artillery and tanks opened up on Slupcane too, drawing return fire from rebel mortars and machine guns.
A policeman in Ljubodrag said the convoy would reinforce some 50 officers in the station in Matejce, which had been surrounded by the guerrillas.
Until now, the village -- which has a mixed ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slav population -- has been spared clashes between the Macedonian forces and the guerrillas, but several attacks on the police station have been reported.
Army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski confirmed the police station had been attacked, but denied that it was surrounded.
Markovski said that the rebels had tried to spread the fighting south after suffering "huge losses", including the death of Sabil Limani, a rebel area commander known under the nom de guerre "Tiger".
Another guerrilla chief contacted by telephone, Commander Hoxha, denied that Limani had been killed.
Both sides in Macedonia's three-month-old civil conflict regularly make unverifiable and apparently exaggerated claims about casualty figures.
Markovski said that 1,358 people had been evacuated from two hamlets south of Matejce -- Nikustak and Vistica -- which have so far been spared from clashes.
Evzi Dzemaili, a resident of Vistica, told AFP that "all the people have left, after mortar shells fell in the village".
Meanwhile, Macedonia's chief of police special forces and his deputy were suspended for disobeying orders to send their men into rebel-held villages, interior ministry spokesman Stevo Penadrovski told AFP.
Macedonian tanks blast village as Solana arrives for talks Posted May 28, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010528/3/q9gf.html
Monday May 28, 9:32 PM
Macedonian tanks blast village as Solana arrives for talks
By Anatoly Verbin
LJUBODRAG, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonian tanks blasted targets in a northern village on Monday to try to drive out ethnic Albanian guerrillas as the EU's top diplomat arrived in the capital hoping to save the national unity government.
Two tanks shelled suspected rebel positions above Matejce, one of a string of a dozen villages controlled by the guerrillas in hilly terrain about 40 km (25 miles) northeast of the capital Skopje.
Tank shells hit at least four houses in the village as well as the village mosque. Smoke billowed into the sky.
Tanks and long-range artillery also continued the bombardment of the villages of Orizare and Slupcane, a few kilometres east of Matejce.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana began top-level political talks as part of an international effort to snuff out the conflict which could ignite another full-scale Balkan war.
"I came to talk to the government and leaders of different political formations to see how we can resume the political dialogue, which I think is important," Solana said.
Solana has been spearheading Western efforts to defuse the crisis with a twin-track approach of backing Macedonian military action against the guerrillas while urging the Slav majority ethnic group to improve opportunities for ethnic Albanians.
But the national unity government formed just over two weeks ago was plunged into crisis last week after it emerged the two main ethnic Albanian parties in the coalition had met the rebels' political leader, Ali Ahmeti.
The West has joined Slav parties in expressing horror at the move and has called on the ethnic Albanian party leaders to distance themselves from the peace plan they agreed with Ahmeti -- something they have not yet done.
TALKS ON CIVILIANS
While the Macedonian authorities were able to claim some success on the battlefield late last week after capturing two villages from the rebels, the guerrillas appear to have struck back by taking control of most if not all of Matejce.
The Defence Ministry said talks were continuing on how to evacuate thousands of civilians from the conflict zone. "The military operation will depend on the decision about the evacuation of civilians," said ministry spokesman Georgi Trendafilov.
Most civilians are now believed to be in the village of Lipkovo. The mayor of another village said he had been in touch with his counterpart in Lipkovo and conditions there were bad.
"There are about 10,000 in Lipkovo and most of them stay in cellars or houses without roofs," said Reshat Ferati, who said he had talked on Sunday to Lipkovo mayor Hysamedin Halili.
"Halili told me that their food reserves are running out and they are now eating maize which they normally feed to the animals," Ferati, mayor of Aracinovo, told Reuters.
The guerrillas began their uprising at the start of this year, saying they were fighting against state-backed discrimination and violence against ethnic Albanians, who make up around one-third of the state's population of two million.
The latest clashes in the north broke out at the beginning of this month.
The West has condemned the guerrillas, arguing that while Albanians may have some legitimate grievances, these should and can be resolved democratically.
A rebel commander said Macedonian forces had shelled Lipkovo on Sunday. The commander, known as Hoxha, said by telephone on Monday that three houses in the village had been hit by shelling and seven more shells had fallen in houses' courtyards.
He said one five-year-old girl had been wounded in the shelling. His statements could not be independently verified as neither reporters nor humanitarian aid teams have been able to visit Lipkovo for days because of the fighting.
DPA LEADER XHAFERI: "The representatives of 'NLA' are not terrorists"; 'NLA' occurred "as a result of the dissatisfaction of the people"MACEDONIA WILL EXIST IF IT CHANGES ITS CONSTITUTION Posted May 27, 2001
http://www.mia.com.mk
DPA LEADER XHAFERI: MACEDONIA WILL EXIST IF IT CHANGES ITS CONSTITUTION
Sofia, May 26 (MIA) - "The representatives of 'NLA' are not terrorists, as the terrorists do not have political leaders, do not wear uniforms and do not have political program," DPA leader Arben Xhaferi stated in his interview for Bulgarian daily "Monitor".
As MIA reports, Xhaferi stresses that the so-called 'NLA' occurred "as a result of the dissatisfaction of the people", underlining that "those that are self organized, have political program and political representatives."
According to DPA leader, Macedonia will exists only if it changes its Constitution. Unless it fulfills the requests of the Albanians, which are reasonable and guarantee the territorial integrity of the country, "Macedonia will fall in constitutional crisis."
Assessing that "the international community supports the demands of the Albanians in Macedonia," Xhaferi stresses that it is being worked on establishing peace and demilitarization of the so-called NLA, which would create conditions for political dialogue. He thinks that the negotiations will end by November, and by then the demands will be fulfilled.
According to Xhaferi Macedonia is a small state, which cannot resist the permanent political and military pressure as well as the destabilization of its institutions.
At the end of the interview for "Monitor", DPA leader Arben Xhaferi concludes that "if Macedonia continues with its ethnic stubbornness, ethnic states will be established as the only possible model for establishing peace on the Balkans." sa/vd/16:41
Fighting rages on in Macedonia as fears for civilians mount Posted May 27, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010526/1/q5rh.html
Sunday May 27, 4:19 AM
Fighting rages on in Macedonia as fears for civilians mount
VAKSINCE, Macedonia, May 26 (AFP) -
Macedonian forces launched fresh artillery and helicopter strikes Saturday against rebel-held villages, increasing fears for thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting.
The army was not able to repeat its success of Friday, when two villages fell to its offensive, and was forced to call off its attacks at nightfall out of concern for the villagers, whom officials claimed were being held hostage.
"Military operations have been suspended for today. Our principal objective is to create the conditions for the civilians to be evacuated, not to deal with the terrorists," army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said.
As police special forces secured the government's shaky hold on the abandoned villages of Vaksince and Lojane, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery pounded Slupcane, a rebel stronghold in the hills north of Skopje.
Police arrived in the two captured villages late Friday to find that the ethnic Albanian guerrillas who had held them since May 3 had escaped, disappearing soon after 3,000 civilians fled the zone.
A rebel leader told AFP by telephone that they still held positions in the foothills of the Black Mountains of Skopje above Vaksince and that they were ready to defend Slupcane, which had also been vacated by civilians.
"It is only us left in Slupcane, we can defend ourselves," he said.
But Skopje claimed that some civilians were left in the village and that the rebels were holding them there as "human shields" in a bid to thwart the assault.
Markovski said that civilians trapped in Slupcane had telephoned officials to ask to be evacuated.
"We called out through loud-speakers for the civilians to come out, but we received a second telephone call telling us that the terrorists were threatening those who wanted to come out at gunpoint," he said.
Some foreign reporters have reported seeing rebel fighters threatening civilians, and the evacuation of Vaksince and Lojane only came as the guerrillas were preparing to abandon their positions to the advancing army.
"At the moment our operation to evacuate civilians cannot go forward. The situation is complicated because we don't know how many people are being kept hostage," defence ministry spokesman Georgi Trendafilov said.
Earlier, two Macedonian army Mi-24 helicopter gunships flew in low over Slupcane and launched a salvo of missiles at the village.
Slupcane has been the target of repeated government artillery, tank and helicopter bombardments since May 3, when the National Liberation Armyseized the village in the name of their self-declared crusade for increased rights for Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority.
An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Annick Bouvier, said the organisation had received calls reporting that thousands of civilians had fled Slupcane and nearby villages for the rebel-held village of Lipkovo.
"We don't know what the situation is in Slupcane, we have no access to the zone because of the military activity, but we are very worried about the situation of the exposed people," she said.
Smoke rose from the village and houses were ablaze on hills nearby after another morning of artillery attacks from government positions on the rolling farmland east of Slupcane, which is nestled at the foot of the mountains.
Homes in Vaksince were also shelled during the offensive, and now lie abandoned apart from police patrols gingerly searching the ruins.
The red roofs of homes at the front of the village have been smashed, and abandoned weapons lie around bunkers and trenches linking sandbagged buildings once used as guerrilla firing points.
"We control the village," said a policeman stationed at the entry to the village with 20 well-armed comrades wearing body-armour and helmets.
"But we've not been everywhere. Special forces are searching the village, house by house."
After more than two months of sporadic skirmishing with government forces in Macedonia's northern hills, the NLA arrived in force, seizing a dozen villages in a 400 square kilometre (150 square mile) swathe of territory starting 25 kilometres (16 miles) north of the capital.
Fearing that Macedonia would become the latest Balkan republic to descend into a savage round of ethnic conflict, a series of high-level US, NATO ad EU envoys urged Skopje to deal with the problem politically, isolating the extremists.
A government of national unity, including two ethnic Albanian parties, was formed, but it immediately began to look shaky as Albanian politicians continued to demand an end to the military offensive against the rebels.
The crisis came to a head when it was revealed that the two Albanian party leaders had signed an accord on "common action" with the NLA's political wing, and Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accused them of "joining a terrorist organisation".
At the weekend, fierce discussion was still going on within the coalition, which western observers warn could fall apart and hasten Macedonia's slide into all-out civil strife.
PDP Leader Imeri: The Government Encouraged Us To Contact NLA Posted May 26, 2001
http://www.kosovalive.com
The Government Encouraged Us To Contact NLA, says PDP Leader Imeri
May 25, 2001
SKOPJE (KosovaLive)- Top political and international officials met at the U.S. embassy Thursday night, including the leader of the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), Imer Imeri, U.S. ambassador Mike Einik, French ambassador Jean Francois Terral, German ambassador Verner Burchardt, and British ambassador Mark Dickinson, who is also the United Nations official representative.
After this meeting, Imer Imeri, the PDP leader declared: "Sometimes there is confusion among general opinion in Macedonia, as if we are contributing to the war, even though we have similar opinions as the International Community on how to establish peace. By all means we are working for peace and we are getting there."
"The government was encouraging us to contact the NLA and to convince them to lay down their weapons, and we achieved that" Imeri said about a joint communiqué he issued with the leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians Arben Xhaferi, and the NLA political leader, Ali Ahmeti. (ar)
Rebels Fire on Macedonian Police Posted May 26, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010526/8/q4zs.html
Saturday May 26, 4:54 PM
Rebels Fire on Macedonian Police
By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC, Associated Press Writer
VAKSINCE, Macedonia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels showered Macedonian police with heavy mortar and machine-gun fire Saturday, wounding one officer and refuting the government's claims that it has driven the insurgents out of their northern strongholds.
Police in the village of Matejce, about six miles northwest of the city of Kumanovo, reported heavy mortar and sniper fire on their positions. The army later fired artillery at suspected rebel targets in the area, army spokesman Col. Blagoja Markovski said.
An undetermined number of civilians, meanwhile, tried to leave the nearby village of Slupcane, but ''(ethnic) Albanian federalists opened sniper fire on them so the civilians hastily returned to the village,'' Markovski said.
He said army troops were headed to Slupcane on Saturday after having cleared the rebels out of Vaksince, another insurgent stronghold along the rugged border with Kosovo where the rebels have been based.
The insurgents say they are fighting for greater rights and recognition for Macedonia's minority ethnic Albanians. But the government contends they are terrorists bent on seizing territory and carving out an ethnic Albanian mini-state, and it launched a fresh offensive Thursday aimed at driving the militants out of the region.
There were unconfirmed reports Friday that as many as 60 civilians were killed in the recent fighting. A police official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the likelihood of dozens of deaths but said the victims were rebels out of uniform and in civilian clothing.
Markovski also denied civilians were killed, but said: ``There are plenty of casualties among the terrorists - I don't know how many, and I don't even want to count them.''
Up to 3,000 refugees crossed into Serbia, including many ethnic Albanians, officials said.
Hundreds congregated on a field at Tabanovce, just a few miles from Vaksince. Government troops separated women, children and elderly men from men of fighting age but provided them all with first aid, water and other necessities.
Bujar Alili, one of the refugees, spoke of days of fear spent in a cellar to escape government shelling.
There were approximately 60 of us,'' he told a reporter. ``We did not have enough water.''
The government has spoken of thousands of civilians being held by the rebels as human shields, something both the insurgents and evacuated civilians have previously denied.
But Alili and another man, Ibrahim Sejdiji, both spoke of ``armed men with guns'' forcing them to stay.
In Skopje, the capital, a political crisis threatened the country's new national unity government, formed with two ethnic Albanian parties in an effort to avert a wider crisis and ease the threat of civil war.
On Thursday, it was revealed that the ethnic Albanian coalition parties had secretly negotiated a peace deal with the insurgents, an action condemned by Macedonia's majority Slavs.
The deal provided that the rebels would agree to stop fighting in exchange for amnesty guarantees. The rebels also would be given the power to veto political decisions on ethnic Albanian rights.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accused the ethnic Albanian parties in his coalition of openly merging with the rebels, declaring: ``Albanians are siding against (Slavic) Macedonians.''
The government opposes negotiations with the rebels and rejects including them in the political process - a stance supported by the United States, the European Union and other Macedonian allies opposed to legitimizing the rebels' use of force.
Government spokesman Antonio Milososki said Friday that ethnic Albanian politicians had not distanced themselves from the deal, and that as a result, cooperation among the partners in the governing coalition was ``frozen.''
A government split could doom efforts at ethnic reconciliation and deepen the conflict, which erupted in February. Fighting raged into late March and then subsided, only to flare again last month after rebels killed eight Macedonian government commandos in an ambush.
Cellar dwellers stumble into the light fleeing Macedonia battle Posted May 25, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010525/1/q3ot.html
Saturday May 26, 12:38 AM
Cellar dwellers stumble into the light fleeing Macedonia battle
TABANOVCE, Macedonia, May 25 (AFP) -
After three weeks huddled in cellars under their bombed out homes, hundreds of villagers trapped by fighting in northern Macedonia scrambled into the light Friday and stumbled to safety.
As police special forces backed by army tanks and helicopters forced their way into the outskirts of the village of Vaksince, a string of ethnic Albanian families seized the moment to come out of their hiding places.
Under police escort, they walked five kilometres (three miles) from the battered village across rolling cornfields towards the relative safety of a railway marshalling yard.
Among them were half a dozen old women pushed in wheel-barrows, a legless old man in a wheel chair and hundreds of frightened, exhausted infants -- some of them carried in the arms of police officers, sweating in their body-armour.
"I didn't want to go, but there was no food left," said 50-year-old Isufi Hasan, "I've got 200 sheep and seven cows, and I didn't want to leave them. 54 of my ewes were killed yesterday."
But Hasan has five children and his wife is diabetic. They were exhausted after three weeks in the cellars of Vaksince, bombarded almost evey night by government gunners and force-fed propaganda by ethnic Albanian rebels who seized control of about 10 villages in the area at the start of the month.
The men, who were separated from their families while police checked if they had rebel links, were guarded about describing what happened in the villages.
The women, like Kinvita Asipi, a 30-year-old mother-of-six, claimed improbably that they saw nothing and just decided all of a sudden to get away.
"We've got family in Kumanovo, we'll stay with them," she said, referring to the main town in the area.
One angry man, spitting fury, takes out his frustration on reporters: "If you were men, you'd have done something about this before it came to this."
Although several of the elderly were sick with exhaustion, none of the refugees seen by AFP appeared to have been injured in the heavy shelling that could be heard and seen all morning around the village.
It has been the presence of the civilians which prevented the government from mounting an all-out assault on the villages since they were taken by the guerrillas, many of them local men, on May 3.
Instead they have kept a sporadic but heavy bombardment of suspected rebel positions, at once terrifying the civilians and allowing the guerrillas to portray themselves as their defenders.
The government has repeatedly accused the rebels of using the civilians as human shields, but the villagers have always denied this and said there was no attempt to stop them leaving on Friday.
An AFP reporter who visited cellar-bound civilians under bombardment in the neighbouring village of Slupcane found villagers expressing total solidarity with the rebels, but gripped with a morbid fear of life beyond their homes.
But the fear that kept them underground finally drove them to escape on Friday, and when they came upon the police they did not find the brutal monsters they were told to expect.
In the cellars they had swapped improbable tales of arbitrary massacres and poison gas attacks, but once free they followed the police peacefully and dived with gratitude on a barrow-load of mineral water.
Controversial OSCE envoy withdrawn from Macedonia Posted May 25, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010525/1/q3of.html
Saturday May 26, 12:22 AM
Controversial OSCE envoy withdrawn from Macedonia
ATTENTION -with arrival in Bucharest, comments from Frowick spokesman ///
BUCHAREST, May 25 - A senior Western envoy to Macedonia arrived in Bucharest Friday after leaving Skopje under fire for encouraging dialogue with ethnic Albanian rebels in the country.
Robert Frowick, a US diplomat representing the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a pan-European security body, was due to meet here with Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana.
Romania currently chairs the OCEA and Frowick is Mircea's official representative for the Macedonian crisis.
The diplomat came under criticism after a meeting Tuesday between two ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia's national unity government and representatives of ethnic rebels who launched attacks in the country in March.
The meeting resulted in a declaration by the two sides calling for "common action" to address complaints of Macedonia's large Albanian minority, an appeal Macedonians officials decried as incitement to violence.
Carlo Ungaro, the OSCE permanent mission chief in Macedonia, said that Frowick's views on how to deal with the crisis did not correspond to those of the OSCE mission and were "contrary to the official positions of the international community."
Frowick was being withdrawn for an indefinite period, he said.
A spokesman for Frowick said that the meeting in Bucharest was intended to clear up confusion resulting from Frowick's suggestions for resolving the crisis.
A European diplomat based in Skopje told AFP that Frowick's plan to encourage dialogue with ethnic Albanian rebels was unacceptable.
"We cannot negotiate with terrorists," he said, describing the row as "an unpleasant episode" and the international community's role as "damage limitation".
The diplomat said high-level talks were being held with ethnic Albanian politicians to persuade them to back off from contacts with the guerrillas and to press on with political dialogue with Macedonian Slavs.
Macedonian leaders have criticised Frowick for proposing an amnesty for ethnic Albanian rebels and for addressing the political representative of the rebel fighters, Ali Ahmeti, by name in a public call for peace.
Both the rebels and mainstream ethnic Albanian parties are seeking a change to the constitution which would give Macedonia's large ethnic Albanian minority the same legal status as the majority Slav population, and make Albanian an official language.
Civilians flee Macedonia's death-trap villages Posted May 25, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010525/3/q48h.html
Saturday May 26, 5:10 AM
Civilians flee Macedonia's death-trap villages
By Douglas Hamilton
SKOPJE (Reuters) - After three weeks of shelling which failed to budge them, a Macedonian army offensive on Friday drove thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians from villages under the control of guerrillas.
Their departure could clear the way for an all-out assault.
The army asserts that only the presence of "human shields" and the grave political fallout that a bloodbath would have prevents it steam-rollering over the lightly-armed rebels.
About 2,000 refugees fled north into Serbia overnight and 1,000 or so more left Vakcince in northeastern Macedonia on Friday as the army battled the insurgents for control of their village and neighbouring rebel-held settlements. Fighting on Friday prevented Red Cross medical teams from reaching the area to check reports that at least seven civilians had been killed in the past 48 hours and several more wounded.
"We need a ceasefire but so far it has not been possible to get this security guarantee," said Annick Bouvier of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "We want to get in to assess the situation and evacuate any injured."
EVASIVE ANSWERS
Arriving at a railway station on the Yugoslav border, the Vakcince people sat in a field, the men separated from the women, possibly to be tested for signs of having used firearms.
Plainly afraid they would be suspected of complicity with the guerrillas, the men's answers appeared evasive.
"Nobody told us anything, good or bad," said one man. "How would I know?" replied another asked about casualties. "You just hear shooting, without knowing from where it comes. We were 38 people in a small room. There was no air."
During past halts in long-range shelling, called by the army to induce civilians to leave, male villagers were seen out in the lanes chatting and talking to guerrillas, while women and children were kept in basement rooms and shown to reporters.
The imminent capture of Vakcince by advancing troops may have persuaded all sides it was no longer possible to hold out.
"We decided that we have to leave, there was no other choice. Everyone was coming out. We were not organised. We just saw people leaving and we joined them. I thought to myself, 'They can shoot if they want', said Afrim Ahmeti.
Curses were rained on the bedraggled column by police and soldiers, he said. "You can't imagine the swearing."
COALITION STILL ALIVE
In the capital, Skopje, political leaders met to repair relations between Macedonian Slav and ethnic Albanian parties, strained to near-breaking point by news of a "peace deal" the Albanians concluded in secret with a guerrilla political chief.
The outcome was inconclusive, but the exchange conciliatory, and the coalition which Western powers see as Macedonia's only chance of averting a slide to civil war was still breathing.
The secret meeting had so outraged some Slav political leaders that Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said "no mercy" could be shown to the rebels now.
There was no accurate means of assessing how many villagers might remain in Lojane, Vakcince, Slupcance, Orizare, and a half dozen other red-roofed hamlets seized by rebels three weeks ago.
Military analysts said it might take weeks more to drive a motivated guerrilla force of several hundred from the area.
The commander of a special police unit had been suspended for withdrawing from the Vakcince front without authorisation, apparently after guerrilla snipers wounded three of his men.
RENOUNCE TAINTED PACT WITH REBELS
But the safety of civilians appeared crucial.
A high toll could tip the balance towards the breakup of the coalition, which is holding the republic together and staving off the threat of a civil war that could enflame the Balkans.
Despite some unsourced reports of up to 60 civilians killed, a senior guerrilla commander said on Friday he knew of no more deaths than the seven victims he had named 24 hours earlier.
Six were from the Zymberi family, reportedly killed when a shell pierced the concrete ceiling of their basement shelter.
Diplomats said the Macedonian Slav leadership was prepared to accept that the two Albanian party chiefs had made an honest error of judgement in meeting the guerrilla representative, but they had to publicly renounce their peace document.
So far, neither has done so.
The European Union and the NATO countries slammed the pact as an inadmissible legitimisation of violence. The man who engineered it, OSCE Balkans envoy Robert Frowick, was "asked politely to leave" Macedonia, the foreign minister said.
Army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski astonished reporters at his regular briefing on Thursday by claiming, in spite of days of eyewitness reports and reels of video footage to the contrary, that no houses had been shelled.
Deep Political Crisis in Macedonia Posted May 25, 2001
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/macedonia010525.html
Deep Political Crisis in Macedonia
by RN Eastern Europe correspondent James Kliphuis, 25 May 2001
Macedonia's "government of political unity", in which the country's main political parties all take part, is in a state of acute crisis -- only twelve days after it was formed. Politicians of the Slav majority in Macedonia insist that the representatives of the ethnic Albanian minority in the government should recant from an agreement they signed earlier with Albanian guerrilla leaders. Concluding agreements with rebel leaders is tantamount to promoting terrorism -- that is how these Macedonian politicians view the talks between Albanian political leaders and rebel leaders.
What the document actually says is not terribly surprising: the Macedonian constitution should be amended to reinforce the position of the Albanians: they should no longer be described as a minority but as one of the peoples that make up the Macedonian nation. Albanian should be one of Macedonia's official languages. But the country should not be broken up into separate parts for Slavs and Albanians, there should be no federal structure. These wishes are nothing new.
Don´t Talk to Terrorists An amnesty for guerrilla fighters, and a corridor to allow rebels to withdraw across the international border into Kosovo are more controversial issues -- but it is not what the rebels and ethnic Albanian politicians demand -- now with one voice -- that has angered the Macedonian Slav politicians; it is the simple fact that the talks took place at all. "The Macedonian government of political unity does not talk to terrorists" has been the line taken by Macedonia's president and prime minister all along -- and Boris Trajkovski and Ljubco Georgievski feel this should apply to the ethnic Albanian parties in the coalition as it does to the Macedonian Slavs.
Robert Frowick, the special envoy for the OSCE (the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) to Macedonia facilitated the talks between the Albanian politicians and the rebel leaders. A career diplomat in his early seventies, the American Frowick built up considerable Balkans expertise over the past years as head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia. There, on several occasions, he demonstrated a conviction that conditions need not be perfect for rigorous measures to be adopted to help a country on its way towards democracy. In Bosnia, he chose to overlook major lacunae in the organisation of the democratic process in order to achieve the greater goal of a multi-ethnic administrative structure based on the outcome of elections, held at a time when many believed the country was not yet ready for them.
Hot Potato This time, in Macedonia, his impatience certainly got the better of him. Frowick must have known the Macedonian government (at any rate, the vast (Macedonian) majority of its officials) was not yet ready for talks with the ethnic Albanian rebels. In order to achieve an agreement that mainly repeated old arguments, he gambled and lost whatever leverage he had. Over the years, the OSCE has been an active, well-informed and useful organisation in Macedonia, providing a point of contact between the country's ethnic Albanian minority and its Slav majority. As soon as the Skopje government told Frowick to get out of the country (a remarkable step to take with regard to a senior US diplomat) the OSCE dropped its special envoy like a hot potato, and a number of EU countries quickly followed suit.
It remains to be seen whether Macedonia's government will be able to ride out the storm. The Macedonian army has launched the heaviest attacks on rebel positions yet; whether the chasm between Albanians and Macedonians can still be bridged is extremely uncertain. It is the worst crisis the country has seen in the ten years of its existence.
Albanian Deal Threatens Coalition Posted May 25, 2001
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr/bcr_20010524_1_eng.txt
Albanian Deal Threatens Coalition
The international community has joined Macedonians in condemning the secret deal struck by Albanian leaders with NLA fighters.
By Veton Latifi and Agim Fetahaj in Skopje (BCR No. 250, 25-May-01)
The news hit Skopje like a bombshell on Thursday morning. Macedonia's two main Albanian leaders had signed a secret peace deal with NLA fighters in the north of the country.
The reaction to the news was immediate and scathing. "Xhaferi and Imeri sign document betraying Macedonia" ran the front page of the daily Nova Makedonija.
Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, leader Arber Xhaferi and Imer Imeri, leader of the Party for Democratic Prosperity, PPD, signed the accord with NLA representative Ali Ahmeti two days before in Kosovo.
In doing so, they provoked the wrath of Macedonian parties and threatened to destroy the new unity government.
The accord offered an amnesty for the guerrillas in return for a ceasefire declaration. It also gave the NLA a right to veto decisions relating to Albanian rights.
"These meetings are unacceptable and go against the government's and their own commitment not to negotiate with terrorists," President Boris Trajkovski said in a press statement on Thursday.
He called on Xhaferi and Imeri to immediately renounce the agreement. Or else "it will not be possible to work together," he warned, throwing the future of the newly broadened coalition government into question.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski appeared even more incensed by the deal. "The agreement," he said, "represents a declaration of war by the Albanians against the Macedonian nation."
Condemnation also came from the international community. "The EU and its member countries have already made clear the fact that there is no place for the NLA and its political representatives at the negotiating table," read a statement issued by the EU president's office.
The EU also called on the two Albanian leaders "to renounce the document in a way which shows no ambiguity".
While the US embassy condemned the meeting as "totally unacceptable" it did not comment on the role of Robert Frowick, a US diplomat and a senior envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE .
Macedonian government officials and some Western diplomats here in Skopje said Frowick had not only encouraged Albanian leaders to meet with the rebels but actually mediated the agreement. Frowick has so far declined to comment on his role.
Frowick flew to Romania late Thursday ostensibly to discuss the situation with the foreign minister who holds the rotating chair of the OSCE.
Macedonian officials have criticized his part in the affair and some suggest that he was asked to leave the country.
On Thursday afternoon, Xhaferi and Imeri attempted to present their case to a meeting of a dozen Western diplomats at the US embassy in Skopje, indicating that they weren't prepared to tear up the deal.
Xhaferi told journalists after a second round of talks at the US embassy that "every party is an autonomous political unit and it is not right to ask him to renege on his decisions".
In reaction to the barrage of criticism, Xhaferi sent a message to Trajkovski to be "careful with his statements" . He also implied that he was unhappy being pressured into disowning the contentious deal.
Imeri then made a surprise announcement. "We were encouraged to approach the NLA by the government and we did it for peace". Imeri added that Macedonian officials and international community were "overreacting".
Failing to clarify what he meant by government encouragement, he tried to calm the fears of those who took the deal as signifying a further rift between the country's two main communities. "Albanians support the preservation of Macedonian integrity and its multicultural character," he said.
Meanwhile, the Macedonian army launched a new offensive in northern Macedonia. Helicopter gunships and tanks were used against rebel held villages.
Nine civilians are reported to have died and some 200 wounded in the Likova area. Among the dead were six members of the Zyberi family in Slupcane. One resident of the village described the humanitarian situation as appalling, "We cannot safeguard our families, tend to our wounded or bury our dead."
As the ethnic divide deepens, there's mounting frustration of the apparent reluctance of certain members of the coalition to discuss key Albanian demands.
All this is putting strain on the continued existence of the coalition. If it falls apart, it will lead to the wholesale deterioration of inter-ethnic relations which in turn could easily plunge Macedonia into all-out civil war.
Veton Latifi is an IWPR editorial assistant in Macedonia. Agim Fetahaj is IWPR's special projects editor
Albanians Back Macedonian Unity: US government survey in Macedonia reveals that most Albanians are opposed to the ethnic division of the country Posted May 25, 2001
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr/bcr_20010524_2_eng.txt
Albanians Back Macedonian Unity
US government survey in Macedonia reveals that most Albanians are opposed to the ethnic division of the country
By Tim Judah in London (BCR No. 250, 25-May-01)
According to the conspiracy theorists, western intelligence agents are crawling in and out of every Balkan hole in search of information, which is then dutifully relayed back home, by satellite-tracked carrier pigeons. In fact, IWPR can reveal that, at least in helping determine policy towards Macedonia, the United States for one, is actually relying on a far more scientific and reliable methods. It is commissioning opinion polls.
The latest one, conducted on behalf of the State Dept's Office of Research, of which IWPR has obtained a copy, makes for interesting reading. It finds, for example, that while 69 per cent of Albanians are sympathetic to the NLA guerrillas, 87 per cent of them also say that it is important to them personally that Macedonia remains united. Unsurprisingly, 99 per cent of Macedonians also want their country to stay united.
The poll of 1091 "nationally representative" adults, including 787 Macedonians and 227 Albanians, was conducted between April 16 and May 3 - just before the formation of Macedonia's unity government.
What is fascinating is that while on several questions Macedonians and Albanians have almost uniformly opposing views, on other questions it is clear that there is, or at least was, still grounds for optimism that a full-scale war can be avoided.
The poll found that Macedonians approved of the way their government had been handling the crisis while Albanians did not. Macedonians were very divided in their views on NATO's presence in Macedonia and along the Kosovo border while Albanians were extremely favourable.
As some diplomats begin discreetly to float the idea of an MFOR (a NATO-led peace force for Macedonia) it is significant that one of the questions asked was whether people would approve or not of KFOR, in neighbouring Kosovo, entering Macedonia "to help end violence in the north-west". A majority of Macedonians, 59 per cent, opposed this, while 79 per cent of Albanians said they would be in favour.
By contrast, NATO's decision to allow Yugoslav forces back into the Ground Safety Zone bordering Macedonia, a move which precipitated the collapse of the UCPMB, the NLA's sister organisation in southern Serbia, provoked opposite reactions. Some 84 per cent of Macedonians approved, while 79 per cent of Albanians disapproved.
Most worryingly, it is clear that there is no meeting of minds when it comes to Albanian demands for reform in the country. For example, 96 per cent of Macedonians opposed the idea of recognising Albanians as "a nation" in Macedonia, while 98 per cent of Albanians were in favour. Similarly, 97 per cent of Macedonians opposed making Albanian an official language for contracts and business, including for courts and parliament. This was supported by 98 per cent of Albanians.
Two-thirds of Macedonians believe that their Albanian co-citizens would actually prefer to live in a pan-Albanian state. However, that view is not supported when Albanians are asked. For example, a majority of Albanians, 71 per cent, said they would prefer to live in an ethnically-mixed Macedonia rather than a greater Albanian state. Just 16 per cent supported the latter.
Those who supported a Greater Albania were then asked if they would still be in favour if "fighting with neighbouring countries" was required to achieve that goal. At that point, only 13 per cent of them still supported it.
The Office of Research concluded that support for the NLA stemmed from its stated aim to increase ethnic Albanians' political status rather than to separate western Macedonia from the rest of the country.
Significantly, the poll found regional variations in Albanian views. For example, it discovered that Albanians living around Kumanovo, the region where there has been most fighting in the last few weeks," express the most strident support for uniting all Albanians in one state; in fact in this region alone they prefer a greater Albanian state to a multi-ethnic Macedonia".
It found that Albanians around Tetovo "are relatively sympathetic to the idea of uniting all Albanians in a single state, but would clearly prefer to stay in an ethnically-mixed Macedonia". Although, it also revealed they were very suspicious and distrustful of their Macedonian neighbours.
The poll also discovered that Albanians in other areas of western Macedonia "are clearly committed to current borders and oppose a united Albanian state. Those living in the southernmost region around Bitola (where anti-Albanian riots recently occurred) are especially opposed to the idea of greater Albania and in this region alone, a majority oppose the activities of the NLA".
Although the poll asked Albanians about uniting with all other Albanians in the region, it made no distinction between Kosovo and Albania. Some Albanians, for example, might be far more interested in eventually uniting with Kosovo alone. This question may appear in the next poll.
Worryingly, only one third of Macedonians have a favourable image of their Albanian neighbours but, by contrast, eight out of ten Albanians have a positive view of Macedonians. The pollsters note, "another reassuring sign is that no more than two in ten say that ethnic relations are so bad that they will trigger a 'grave crisis'."
Significantly 82 per cent of Macedonians and 77 per cent of Albanians thought that ten years from now it "is likely that Macedonia will be a united country" - a belief that, curiously, "increased significantly since last year".
Since the poll was conducted, hopes for peace have risen, fallen, risen and been dashed again. The first civilian casualties have been reported and now, thanks to talks between Albanian politicians and the NLA, the unity government is, at least for the moment, a unity government in name only. Views can change quickly in such a situation.
The headline put on the poll report by the Office of Research was "Public Braced for Slow Resolution of Crisis in Macedonia's Northwest...But Majority Expect Country to Remain United". Now we wait with bated breath to read the findings of their next survey.
Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge published by Yale University Press.