Fear of Negative Negotiation Results Drastically Increases Number of Macedonian Refugees Posted August 13, 2001
KosovaLive 13 August 2001
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Fear of Negative Negotiation Results Drastically Increases Number of Macedonian Refugees
August 13, 2001PRISHTINA (KosovaLive) - The escalation of fighting in the FormerYugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) led to an increase in the numberof people arriving and a sharp decline in returns, UNHCR reportedMonday.
UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said that over the pastthree days more than 2,128 people had entered Kosova. Only 200 werereported to have returned to Macedonia, and those mostly went to checkon their property and the situation in the area.
"The dramatic increase in refugee movement, seen on Friday and inparticular on Saturday, did not continue on Sunday," said van GenderenStort, adding that this was not because of an improvement in thesituation in Macedonia, but rather because ethnic Albanians werereportedly afraid to move without valid FYROM passports.
According to UNHCR, the latest wave of refugees would have beenlarger, but people are afraid to move while the fighting continues,especially around the village of Ljuboten. "Yet others still hope for apositive change linked to the peace deal in Ohrid," she added.
Most of the new arrivals came from Skopje and the surrounding areaof Hasanbeg and Aracinovo, where the water situation is reportedly bad.On Saturday, new arrivals also came from Ljuboten, close to where therecent mine explosion incident had taken place.
UNHCR also reported that several refugees had been displaced for thesecond time. "They returned to FYROM before, because of the peacenegotiations. Now they fear that the outcome after all might not be sopositive," said van Genderen Stort.
The extreme proximity of the confrontation line had led to areported displacement of around two hundred people from Krivenik onSaturday afternoon. This is the second time that residents have left thevillage, the first time being after the shelling that resulted in thedeaths of one international and two locals and 23 injuries.
According to UNHCR data, 56,000 refugees are currently settled inKosova. (fo)
Macedonian Government Accusations Groundless and Absurd, Says KPC Posted August 13, 2001
KosovaLive 13 August 2001
http://kosovalive.com/english/latest.htm
Macedonian Government Accusations Groundless and Absurd, Says KPC
August 13, 2001PRISHTINA (KosovaLive) - Accusations made by the Macedonian governmentregarding the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are groundless and absurd,and are intended to discredit an institution of great importance toKosova, according to a statement from the Kosovo Protection Corpsgeneral staff headquarters Monday.
"The accusations made by the Macedonian government are not just fromtoday, and not only from yesterday either. They have continued sincethe crisis [started] in Macedonia, and they have reached their peak withthe latest accusations that the KPC has involved its forces in theconflict in Macedonia," KPC Press Officer Shemsi Syla told KosovaLive.
The reactions from the KPC came after Macedonian President BorisTrajkovski accused the KPC of direct involvement in the open conflict inhis country.
Meanwhile, in a letter sent to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan andNATO General Secretary Lord Robertson, Trajkovski stated that Macedoniawas being attacked with grenade launchers from villages along the borderwith Kosova. He also claimed that about 600 KPC members had enteredMacedonia from Kosova and taken up positions in the villages of Radusaand Luboten.
However, according to KosovaLive's sources, Macedonian securityforces had killed nine Albanian civilians in the village of Luboten,including one child.
Macedonian Prime Minister Lubco Georgievski also criticized KPC andKFOR saying, "KFOR in Kosovo is playing a theatrical role, as if it wereprotecting the border."
"It a big shame for the international community to not fulfill itsobligations, and Macedonia is a victim of its irresponsibility,"Georgievski said.
Syla denied the accusations as "absurd and completely groundless.""They have no factual support whatsoever," he said.
A similar accusation was also denied Sunday by KFOR spokesman HowardRhoades. KPC's involvement in the Macedonian conflict, according toSyla, was also denied by Macedonian Defense Minister Vlado Buckovskihimself. "The KPC is not involved in the conflict," Buckovskireportedly said.
Syla said that all the accusations made by the Macedonian governmenthad a specific intention: "It is done to justify themselves before theirpeople, as a reason for their failure in an open confrontation with theAlbanians people there."
The use of violence against the Albanians reached its culminationand the Macedonian government found itself at the edge of a cliff, Sylaadded. In this context, Macedonian officials seek to justify theirlosses by telling their own people that people with experience in warfrom Kosova were involved in the conflict, he said.
"As an institution, we have always said that war is not the bestsolution to the conflict in the region. The conflict in Macedonia is apolitical problem and it can only be solved politically. The KPCsupports this kind of solution," Syla said. (m.shefkiu)
Peace accord signature to go ahead amid new fighting Posted August 12, 2001
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Sunday, August 12 9:42 PM SGT
Peace accord signature to go ahead amid new fighting
SKOPJE, Aug 12 (AFP) -
New fighting erupted on Sunday in Macedonia between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces, but the country's political parties vowed to go ahead with Monday's planned signature of a peace accord.
Military officials said the clashes took place in Bojance, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Skopje, adding that Macedonian troops had pushed back the rebels.
Fighting also took place on the hills in Ljuboten, 10 kilometres to the northeast of Skopje, they said. Houses in flames could be seen from the capital, witnesses told AFP.
Military combat planes and helicopters could be heard in Skopje and the main road between Skopje and the flashpoint northwestern town of Tetovo was closed, due to fears that rebels had planted landmines.
Tetovo itself was tense, but calm, after three hours of violence there on Saturday in which two people were injured.
The town has been the scene of much of the fighting since rebels launched an insurgency in February, vowing to gain more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as one third of Macedonia's population of two million.
As the violence continued, both Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties told AFP the signature of a peace accord would go ahead as planned in Skopje on Monday, despite an increase in violence in the country.
"The signature of the peace accord is maintained for Monday," a source close to President Boris Trajkovski told AFP.
Party sources said top Western officials were expected to attend the signing ceremony, but NATO Secretary General George Robertson had not yet officially confirmed that he would attend.
Two Macedonian parties, the Macedonian SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE party of Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, and the Albanian PDP and DPA parties said they would also sign the agreement.
The peace accord is seen as a last chance to avert civil war in the former Yugoslav republic, which has been drifting towards war since February.
A rebel attack in the morning against a police station near Ljubanci, about 15 kilometres northeast of the capital, was also stamped out by government forces, the military sources said.
Fighting also took place in the northern village of Radusa, on the border with Kosovo, but later subsided, they said.
They said "a new group of Albanian rebels, wearing the uniform of the Kosovo civil protection force, had crossed from Kosovo into Macedonia" before fighting restarted. It had first erupted in the village on Friday.
On Saturday, the Macedonian defence ministry said nine members of the Macedonian security forces -- eight soldiers and one policemen -- had been injured in the fighting in Radusa.
The ministry accused rebels of entering Macedonia illegally from the neighbouring UN-administrated Serbian province of Kosovo, whose population is mainly ethnic Albanian.
A framework peace deal was agreed on Wednesday between the Balkan country's Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders, but persistent clashes had raised doubts over whether the signing would go ahead as planned.
Under the peace deal, NATO would move in to disarm the rebels.
On Saturday, Trajkovski discussed the situation in his troubled country with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Trajkovski also wrote to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Robertson, asking them for stronger steps by NATO to patrol the mountainous border with Kosovo and to disarm rebel training bases there.
Macedonia has regularly accused the West of indirectly helping rebel fighters, whose logistical and supply base it says is in Kosovo.
Last-Minute Macedonia Truce Leaves Peace Uncertain Posted August 12, 2001
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Sunday August 12 4:44 PM ET
Last-Minute Macedonia Truce Leaves Peace Uncertain
By Philippa Fletcher
SKOPJE (Reuters) - A NATO (news - web sites)-brokered truce between Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels came into effect at the ``11th hour'' on Sunday so that a deal to try to end a six-month conflict could be signed on Monday.
The cease-fire was worked out while the security forces were using jets and attack helicopters in fierce fighting with the guerrillas in an area in the northwest, and shelling set a village close to the capital ablaze.
It came into effect at 7:30 p.m. (1:30 p.m. EDT) after the bloodiest week of the conflict. Up to 30 people have been killed over the past six days, compared with around 100 victims during more than five months of sporadic fighting prior to that.
At least 20 people were reported injured overnight in clashes around the northwestern village of Radusa near Kosovo and in the mainly Albanian town of Tetovo further south.
Most of those reported dead and injured were from the security forces. The rebels rarely announce their casualties.
The fighting appeared to die down as the truce took effect. ''Everything is quiet,'' a Defense Ministry source said.
A rebel source said that the guerrillas would respect what he called a NATO-brokered truce.
The peace deal leaders of the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties are due to sign on Monday is supposed to pave the way for guerrilla disarmament in return for greater rights for the one-third Albanian minority.
The signing of the agreement, brokered by Western envoys at the southern lakeside resort of Ohrid over the past two weeks, had looked in doubt after the ferocious fighting in recent days and it is only the first step on a difficult path toward peace.
A Macedonian official said the rebels, who have taken swathes of territory in the northwest of the country, were expected to withdraw to the lines of a July cease-fire under the truce brokered by NATO special envoy Pieter Feith. A Western source said the withdrawal would be finalized on Monday.
European Union (news - web sites) foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has spearheaded efforts to end the conflict, will visit Skopje to attend the signing of the political deal, a spokeswoman said.
The Macedonian official said NATO Secretary-General George Robertson was also expected to fly in for Monday's ceremony.
But diplomats say an end to the conflict that has threatened to spark a fifth Balkan war in a decade is still far off.
FIERCEST OFFENSIVE
The abrupt cease-fire came hours after Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski called for the ``fiercest offensive'' yet against the rebels, who he said were now threatening Skopje. A Western source said the guerrillas had threatened to strike villages near the capital and the city itself unless security forces stopped shelling the village of Ljuboten, three miles from the city outskirts.
Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski told the private television station Sitel the guerrillas had started the fighting by attacking a police post in the nearby village of Ljubanci.
But the source said no firing appeared to have come from Ljuboten itself, a mainly ethnic Albanian village near a spot where eight soldiers were killed by land mines.
``From where I was standing I could see a third of the village of Ljuboten in flames,'' said an eyewitness.
U.S. envoy James Pardew, who helped to broker the political agreement, said it was the best hope for peace. ``Now is the time for the political leaders to sign the agreement and complete the process. They should sign it tomorrow,'' he told Reuters.
The plan aims to grant greater rights to Albanians in everything from the wider use of the Albanian language to greater recognition of Islam.
But the guerrillas were not at the peace talks and an amnesty, one of their key demands, has yet to be announced. The government says the rebels want to divide the country.
Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the main Albanian political party, blamed the fighting on what he called ``elements on the Macedonian side who do not want peace.''
The Western source said a cease-fire would help get the process back on track but that its success was still uncertain. ''It's the 11th hour,'' he said.
MACEDONIANS ACCUSE NATO
A government source said the recent deaths of 19 security force personnel -- almost half the total from the first five months of conflict -- meant the signing would be low-key.
NATO has offered a force of up to 3,500 troops to help collect weapons from the guerrillas, but only after the political agreement is signed, amnesty and disarmament deals agreed and it is confident a cease-fire will hold.
Macedonian officials have accused NATO and the U.N. missions in Kosovo of not doing enough to stop a large-scale infiltration of guerrillas from Kosovo. NATO rejected the allegations, and said it had arrested 17 suspected rebels in Kosovo on Sunday.
(with reporting by Alister Doyle and Ana Petruseva)
Macedonia Peace Deal to Be Signed, War Still Looms Posted August 12, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010812/ts/balkans_macedonia_dc.html
Sunday August 12 6:13 PM ET
Macedonia Peace Deal to Be Signed, War Still Looms
By Alister Doyle
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia's politicians are to sign a peace plan on Monday meant to defuse a six-month rebellion by ethnic Albanian rebels, but huge hurdles remain to averting war in the Balkan state.
European Union (news - web sites) foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO (news - web sites) Secretary General George Robertson will attend a signing ceremony at around 10 a.m. EDT at the residence of President Boris Trajkovski.
Rebels and government announced a NATO-brokered cease-fire on Sunday night after the highest week's death toll since the conflict began in February. The truce seemed to be holding.
The signing of the peace agreement, hammered out last week by leaders of the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties, is meant to help end the rebellion and is one of several conditions for the deployment of 3,500 NATO troops.
But details of the accord, meant to improve the lives of the one-third ethnic Albanian minority by raising their rights in everything from education to religion, have not been published.
A Macedonian official said the rebels, who have taken swathes of territory in the northwest of the country, were expected to withdraw to the lines of a July cease-fire under the truce brokered by NATO special envoy Pieter Feith.
A Western source said the terms of the withdrawal would be finalized on Monday.
And an amnesty for members of the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA) has still to be resolved. The guerrillas were not at the negotiating table but have said they back the plan.
LOW-KEY CEREMONY
A Macedonian official said Monday's signing ceremony would be kept low-key to avoid raising expectations. Any trumpeting of peace could upset Macedonians who, after days of funerals, want revenge rather than reconciliation.
Up to 30 people have been killed in the past week alone, compared with an estimated 100 since the conflict began. Since Tuesday, 19 soldiers and police, five rebels and several civilians have died.
Diplomats say peace is still a long way off. ``They can sign up to anything they like,'' one diplomat said, adding that it would take a lot to make the plan more than a piece of paper.
Previous truces had been quickly made meaningless by more fighting.
Sunday's cease-fire was worked out while the security forces used jets and attack helicopters in fierce fighting with the guerrillas in an area in the northwest. Shelling set a village close to the capital ablaze.
Hard-liners on both sides believe they can win by keeping up the armed struggle. Some Macedonians believe any peace deal amounts to capitulation at gunpoint, and the rebels see no reason to give up territory they have captured in the north.
Just hours before the cease-fire began at 1730 GMT on Sunday, Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski urged the ``fiercest offensive'' yet against the guerrillas.
The rebels say they are pushing for better treatment of the ethnic Albanian minority. The government accuses them of wanting to split Albanian areas off from the rest of the country.
Signature of the accord starts the clock ticking for parliament, the rebels and NATO on an almost impossible timetable.
Parliament is meant to approve the peace plan within 45 days. But the head of the Macedonian parliament has said he will not even discuss the deal until the rebels have disarmed.
The NLA says it cannot hand over weapons unless real reforms are in place. Otherwise, it says, rebels could give up arms on promises of change and then be annihilated by the army.
Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the main Albanian political party, blamed the recent escalation in fighting on Macedonians. ''The agreement can be signed... but I think everything will be very complicated after this,'' he said.
NATO has laid down three conditions for deploying its forces -- signature of the peace deal, an unconditional and open-ended cease-fire, and agreement by the NLA to hand over weapons.
``If we deploy quickly we could get caught in the middle of fighting, if we don't deploy quickly it could get worse,'' one diplomat said.
The alliance says it could send its troops within two weeks and the force would then stay 30 days to collect weapons voluntarily surrendered by the guerrillas.
Macedonian forces call unilateral ceasefire Posted August 12, 2001
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Monday August 13, 3:24 AM
Macedonian forces call unilateral ceasefire
SKOPJE, Aug 12 (AFP) -
Macedonia declared a unilateral ceasefire in its conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels on Sunday one day ahead of the planned signing of a Western-backed peace accord, government officials told AFP.
"In order to give peace a chance, the government has declared a unilateral ceasefire," a senior official said, one day before Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties were due to sign the political agreement.
Officials said that government forces reserved the right to strike back if they came under attack from the guerrillas, but that the situation was relatively calm after several days of fierce fighting.
Western officials connected to peace negotiations said that NATO was trying to extract a promise from rebel leaders that they would respect the ceasefire.
One hour after the ceasefire came into effect at 7:30 pm (1730 GMT) there had been no fresh fighting, an official at the Macedonian government's crisis co-ordination centre told AFP.
But earlier the main spokesman for the rebels had dismissed the ceasefire offer as a "farce", and predicted that it would break down as have all previous attempts to stem the six-month conflict.
"I think the Macedonian side will continue the battle," a rebel spokesman known as Captain Shpati, who describes himself as a official mouthpiece of the self-styled National Liberation Army, told AFP by telephone.
"All the previous statements of the Macedonian side were telling us that they would continue military actions against us," he said.
Earlier on Sunday, security forces and rebels exchanged fire around a string of villages north and west of Skopje, after a week in which at least 18 troops and five rebels were killed in fighting.
Smoke could be seen rising from the village of Ljuboten, 10 kilometres (six miles) north of the capital, while state television reported that the village had been bombarded by government tanks and helicopter gunships.
The leaders of Macedonia's main parties -- including two representing the ethnic Albanian minority -- were expected to sign an accord brokered with the help of NATO and EU envoys on Monday.
The rebels themselves were not represented at the peace talks where the accord was reached, and it is not clear whether they will agree to lay down their arms in exchange for the reforms of minority rights promised in the deal.
Macedonian PM accuses UN-run Kosovo of waging war Posted August 12, 2001
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Monday August 13, 3:46 AM
Macedonian PM accuses UN-run Kosovo of waging war
SKOPJE, Aug 12 (AFP) -
Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accused the United Nations protectorate of Kosovo of waging war against his country, in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made public Sunday.
Georgievski said in a message read in Macedonian on state television that 600 members of a militia supported by Kosovo's international administration had crossed into Macedonia on Saturday and attacked government forces.
"I, personally, consider this an official declaration of war by the international protectorate of Kosovo and by the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which is unfortunately part of the UN civil administration in Kosovo," Georgievski said.
"This is an unprecedented event in international politics, in which a sovereign and democratic country has been the object of aggression from an international protectorate of the United Nations," the letter to Annan said.
The hardline Macedonian leader repeated Skopje's longstanding criticism of Kosovo's NATO-led peacekeeping force, accusing it of allowing ethnic Albanian fighters to cross the border with impunity.
Both Georgievski and President Boris Trajkovski, who wrote separately to NATO Secretary General George Robertson to complain about the incursion, accused the rebels of firing shells from bases within the UN-run province. The guerrilla's military leader, Gezim Ostreni denied that the KPC was helping its fellow ethnic Albanians south of the border.
"The KPC is not involved in Macedonia and has not fired from Kosovo ... in Macedonia there is only one Albanian armed force, and that's the National Liberation Army (NLA)," Ostreni told Kosovo television.
Ostreni was himself a high-ranking member of the KPC until March this year, when he was sacked after taking leave and returning to his home town of Debar, in Macedonia, to join the NLA.
Georgievski also attacked Kosovo's chief UN administrator, Hans Haekkerup, urging Annan to "think about releasing him from his duties".
Macedonian forces on Saturday exchanged fire with a group of ethnic Albanian rebels near the village of Radusa, two kilometres (one mile) south of the republic's frontier with Kosovo.
Government officials said that the rebels had crossed from Kosovo 15 kilometres (nine miles) northwest of Skopje and surrounded a police unit.
The KPC was set up by NATO and the United Nations in 1999 to provide employment for former guerrillas of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.
The unit -- which receives funding, training and equipment from Western countries -- was supposed to be an unarmed civil defence militia, but its members have frequently been implicated in criminal activity inside and outside the province.
KPC leaders make no secret of their ambition to one day form the basis for the army of an independent Kosovo, but have denied involvement in the six-month ethnic Albanian uprising in Macedonia.
Trajkovski called on NATO and the United Nations to shut down the KPC's training camps, state television reported.
Georgievski and his nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party are due to sign a peace accord Monday with the leaders of Macedonia's three other main democratic parties -- including two representing ethnic Albanians.
The government in Skopje on Sunday called a unilateral ceasefire to prepare the ground for the signing, but Georgievski warned that the rebels were not ready to make peace.
"Today when the political parties in Macedonia are one step towards signing the peace agreement, the Albanian paramilitary groups organised by the KPC continue with their aggression," the letter said.
"That confirms that they don't want any kind of agreement and it shows that they are not interested in peace," he said.
str-bk-dc/wdb
Macedonian, ethnic Albanian parties to sign peace accord Posted August 12, 2001
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Sunday August 12, 8:40 PM
Macedonian, ethnic Albanian parties to sign peace accord
SKOPJE, Aug 12 (AFP) -
The signature of a peace accord in Macedonia will go ahead as planned in Skopje on Monday, despite an increase in violence in the country, Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties told AFP on Sunday.
The parties said top Western officials were expected to attend the signing ceremony.
Ali Ahmeti: "NLA Supports the Peace Agreement" Posted August 11, 2001
____________________________________________________________________
National Albanian American Council
1700 K Street, N.W., Suite 1201, Washington, DC 20006
(202) 466-6900
Fax: (202) 466-5593
Email: naac@naac.org
____________________________________________________________________
For Your Information
Ali Ahmeti: "NLA Supports the Peace Agreement"
Dear Friends:
We wanted to share with you the full text of an interview that Ali Ahmeti, political representative of the NLA, gave to the Voice of America Albanian Language Service earlier today. In his interview, Mr. Ahmeti declared that the NLA is ready to accept the peace proposal that has already been initialed by the representatives of Macedonian and Albanian political parties at the peace talks. Upon signature of the agreement, the NLA is ready to comply with its regulations and help with its implementation. Furthermore, Mr. Ahmeti declared that the NLA is already considering disarmament plans that have been proposed to it by NATO representatives in Macedonia.
For the original Albanian version of this interview, please visit the following link to the Voice of America Albanian Language Service website: http://www.voanews.com/albanian/
Following is an English translation of the interview.
Voice of America Interview with Ali Ahmeti, National Liberation Army Friday, August 10, 2001
VOA: Mr. Ahmeti, is NLA the author of the attacks that have taken place these last few days against Macedonian troops, for example of today's incident?
Ahmeti: The NLA has signed an agreement with NATO, where both parties have no right of movement, that is why today I am expressing my regret that the Government troops have entered the mountain road and have stepped on mines which we have not confirmed whether they have been planted by our soldiers or by government forces themselves, so that they could prevent the movement of the NLA in those areas. So again, I express regret for this accident.
VOA: Mr. Ahmeti, a group named Albanian National Army took responsibility together with the NLA, as they say, for the second incident two days ago, when ten Macedonian soldiers were killed. Do you know this group?
Ahmeti: No, we do not have any knowledge. Here in Macedonia, there is only one active emblem, which is that of the NLA, whereas the act was committed on the road Shkup-Tetove, in that region our forces are not deployed, therefore we do not take any responsibility.
VOA: Mr. Ahmeti, what is your opinion on the agreement among the political parties, are you in agreement with all the issues discussed, with all the points on which agreement has been reached?
Ahmeti: Yes of course that in this kind of negotiations, we, the NLA, have presented our platform from the beginning. Naturally our platform did not find adequate support in this conference, but in principle we agree with the platform which has been prepared by EU and USA, and Albanian political parties which participated in this conference. Therefore, we see it reasonable that the platform approved at this conference, the peace platform, receive support from NLA, as well.
VOA: So you accept the agreement that has been reached, could we say that?
Ahmeti: Yes, the NLA is in concurrence with this agreement; here we see that on the basis of this agreement, European standards will be implemented in Macedonia, Macedonia will have an opportunity to become integrated in the Euro-Atlantic structures; based on this agreement, the Albanians will generally accomplish a goal of their own, they will find themselves as equals in their own state.
VOA: Therefore, Mr. Ahmeti, if the Agreement is signed officially, the NLA will try to implement it, including your disarmament?
Ahmeti: Of course. We already have projects for the disarmament of the NLA. These projects have been offered to us from NATO officials, from the representative of Mr. Robertson, and we are now in the process of evaluating and working on these documents.
Macedonia rebel sees hope in peace plan Posted August 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010811/3/1b8hk.html
Saturday August 11, 9:19 PM
Macedonia rebel sees hope in peace plan
By Alister Doyle
SKOPJE (Reuters) - The head of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian rebels expressed backing for a new plan to avert a new Balkan war as Macedonia held a day of mourning on Saturday for eight government soldiers killed by mine blasts.
"The NLA agrees with the agreement," Ali Ahmeti, political leader of the outlawed guerrilla National Liberation Army, told the Albanian service of Voice of America radio late on Friday.
Despite the violence, constitutional political leaders from both sides plan to sign a peace deal on Monday that they hope can avert a new Balkan war. But without backing from the guerrillas, who have not taken part in peace talks, it will be in jeopardy.
There was lull in fighting on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said, after the bloodiest few days in the six-month-old conflict. Friday's death toll among troops hit by the mine blasts rose, however, when an eighth soldier died overnight. Several families were holding funerals on Saturday.
In a rare interview, the NLA's Ahmeti told Voice of America he was optimistic about the plan agreed on Wednesday by leaders of Macedonian and ethnic Albanian constitutional parties, even though he said it had not met all rebel demands for ethnic Albanians, who make up about 30 percent of the population.
Asked if the NLA would go ahead with a plan to disarm if the agreement were signed, Ahmeti said: "Yes, of course. We already have projects for the NLA disarmament."
But he gave no timetable.
"These projects were offered to us by NATO structures through a special representative of Robertson and we are working on these documents," he said, referring to the Western defence alliance's secretary-general, George Robertson.
AMNESTY UNCLEAR
But diplomats say the Macedonian government, which has refused to talk to the rebels, seems far from agreeing to an amnesty for the guerrillas. Rebel disarmament also hinges on a lasting ceasefire and an agreement to deploy 3,500 NATO troops to collect their surrendered weapons.
"After the recent violence, disarmament is a long way off," one diplomat said.
On Wednesday, 10 soldiers died in a rebel ambush, the bloodiest attack of the six-month rebellion. And five rebels were shot dead in the capital Skopje on Tuesday. The violence has pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
Several hundred people demonstrated in Skopje overnight, throwing rocks at the U.S. embassy and smashing windows in a handful of shops, in protest at the deaths of the soldiers.
Macedonian government officials have floated a document offering amnesty for rebels except for those who could be prosecuted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
PEACE PLAN
Macedonia's political leaders agreed the plan on Wednesday that would grant ethnic Albanians more rights for the use of their language, more jobs in the police, better opportunities in education and improved recognition of Islam.
Some Macedonians see the plan as capitulation at gunpoint while many rebels do not want to give up territory they now control in northern Macedonia.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski has reaffirmed that he will go ahead and sign the peace deal on Monday despite escalating violence.
Saturday marked a lull in violence despite some detonations and bursts of automatic rifle fire around Macedonia's second city, Tetovo, in the northwest.
In contrast with Ahmeti, Macedonia's Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva said on Friday that rebels would never agree to a plan to hand arms to NATO and suggested tougher international action.
"Perhaps this should be a sign for redesigning the process and plan for disarmament," she said in a letter to the United Nations, NATO and the European Union.
Rebels and soldiers clashed in northwestern Macedonia late on Friday and several homes were set ablaze.
"There was intensive fire," a rebel commander codenamed Leka said. Macedonia dropped bombs on villages on Thursday from Sukhoi Su-25 jets in a serious escalation of the conflict.
A late-night meeting on Friday of top Macedonian ministers resulted in a decision to continue action to "destroy threats to the safety of citizens and the security forces".
But Ahmeti sounded conciliatory.
In his interview, he expressed "regret" that government troops had been killed by the mine on a mountain road and said it was not yet clear whether the mine was planted by rebels or by government forces. The government squarely blamed the NLA.
He also dismissed suggestions that a splinter group, calling itself the Albanian National Army, was behind the escalation of the conflict. He said he had no knowledge of the ANA and that the NLA was the only rebel force active in the country.
(With reporting by Shaban Buza in Pristina, Philippa Fletcher and Ana Petruseva in Skopje)
Rebel attacks continue in Macedonia as peace deal signing nears Posted August 11, 2001
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Saturday August 11, 8:04 PM
Rebel attacks continue in Macedonia as peace deal signing nears
SKOPJE, Aug 11 (AFP) -
Sporadic rebel attacks continued in Macedonia on Saturday, underlining continuing tensions in the Balkan country as the clock ticked towards the signature of a peace accord aimed at averting all-out war.
Army spokesman Blagoja Markovski told AFP "minor incidents" had been registered near the volatile northwestern town of Tetovo, where ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA) had breached a July 5 ceasefire seven times overnight, using automatic weapons.
Although he said the the situation in Macedonia was "relatively calm", after a serious flare up in violence the previous day, the new shooting underlined tensions which have threatened to scupper the planned signature on Monday of a peace accord between the country's Macedonian and Albanian political parties.
An outline agreement was approved on Wednesday by the parties represented in parliament but since then the situation on the ground has rapidly deteriorated, throwing the signature of the accord into doubt.
Markovski said the overnight breaches took place in the northwestern villages of Gajre, Lisec, Dzepciste, Poroj and Brodec, near Tetovo, Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian town and the scene of much of the fighting since the rebels launched an insurgency in February.
Markovski said the army had not responded to any of the ceasefire violations.
He said in the northern region of Kumanovo, another rebel stronghold, automatic gunfire had been heard in the morning near Nikustak.
In a new sign of tensions on Friday several hundred Macedonian protestors tried to storm the US embassy in Skopje, in the latest expression of Macedonian resentment towards the West.
The Skopje government has regularly accused the West of indirectly helping the rebels.
As the international community expressed concern at the fate of the peace deal on Friday, Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva sent a letter to NATO Secretary General George Robertson and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana urging greater action against the rebels.
"The patience and the threshold of tolerance of the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia have been brought to their limit," the letter said.
The Macedonian National Security Council met overnight and said in a statement it would "continue decisive action with the aim of eliminating the threats to the security forces and citizens of Macedonia".
The rebels say they are fighting for minority rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up to one third of the country of two million people.
On Saturday military sources told AFP an eighth Macedonian soldier had died of his injuries, following a deadly landmine blast a day earlier when a soldiers' supply truck ran over two anti-tank mines near the village of Ljubanci, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of Skopje.
On Friday 10 Macedonian soldiers, killed on Wednesday in the deadliest attack by the rebels thus far, were buried in the southern town of Prilep in a ceremony attended by thousands of angry, grief-stricken mourners.
The US-based rights group Human Rights Watch also criticised the rebels, saying abductions and illegal detentions by the fighters in northwestern Macedonia were on the increase.
The group said it had confirmed that at least 14 ethnic Macedonian men were abducted by the NLA from Tetovo during heavy fighting in late July.
HRW expressed "deep concern about the fate of the men", whose families say were last seen in the custody of NLA fighters.
The organisation said it had unsuccessfully raised the cases of the missing men with the regional NLA commander for Tetovo, who goes by the name of Matoshi, and who stated he had no information about them.
Macedonian army reports sporadic attacks overnight Posted August 11, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010811/1/1b86f.html
Saturday August 11, 7:39 PM
Macedonian army reports sporadic attacks overnight
Macedonia was relatively calm on Saturday morning, after a flare up in violence the previous day threatened to scupper next week's planned signature of a peace accord aimed at avoiding war in the Balkan country.
Army spokesman Blagoja Markovski told AFP only "minor incidents" had been registered near the volatile northwestern town of Tetovo, where ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA) had breached a July 5 ceasefire seven times overnight, using automatic weapons.
He said the breaches took place in the northwestern villages of Gajre, Lisec, Dzepciste, Poroj and Brodec, near Tetovo, Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian town and the scene of much of the fighting since the rebels launched an insurgency in February.
Markovski said the army had not responded to any of the breaches.
He said in the northern region of Kumanovo, another rebel stronghold, automatic gunfire had been heard in the morning near Nikustak.
Late on Friday several hundred Macedonian protestors tried to storm the US embassy in Skopje, further stoking tensions here.
Friday had seen an uneasy calm, after a flare up in violence overnight between guerrillas and Macedonian forces.
Seven soldiers were also killed by a landmine on Friday. And 10 Macedonian soldiers, killed on Wednesday in the deadliest attack by the rebels thus far, were buried in the southern town of Prilep in a ceremony attended by thousands of angry, grief-stricken mourners.
The embassy demonstration was the latest expression of Macedonian resentment towards the West, which the Skopje government has regularly accused of indirectly helping the rebels.
An AFP photographer at the scene said protestors threw stones at both the embassy and police but were prevented from entering the embassy by riot police, who later brought the demonstration under control.
On Friday Western officials voiced concern that the new outbreak of violence in Macedonia would scupper the signature of an internationally brokered peace accord planned for Monday.
An outline agreement was approved Wednesday by the parties represented in parliament but since then the situation on the ground has rapidly deteriorated, throwing the signature of the accord into doubt.
NATO, which would be responsible for disarming the NLA rebels under an eventual peace accord, earlier warned against seeking a military solution to the crisis and urged a return to a July 5 ceasefire.
The focus of concern has been the northwestern town of Tetovo. Rebels control some of the suburbs and are trying to push into parts of the town.
The rebels say they are fighting for minority rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up to one third of the country of two million people.
Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva sent a letter to NATO Secretary General George Robertson and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Friday urging greater action against the rebels.
"The patience and the threshold of tolerance of the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia have been brought to their limit," the letter said.
The Macedonian National Security Council met overnight and said in a statement it would "continue decisive action with the aim of eliminating the threats to the security forces and citizens of Macedonia".
Torture, Kidnappings by Albanians in Macedonia Posted August 11, 2001
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/08/macedonia-0811.htm
Torture, Kidnappings by Albanians in Macedonia
(New York, August 11, 2001) Ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia brutally tortured, sexually abused and mutilated five ethnic Macedonian road workers after abducting them from the Skopje-Tetovo highway on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said today.
The abductions were part of an increasing pattern of illegal detentions and kidnappings by ethnic Albanian fighters who call themselves the National Liberation Army (NLA). Human Rights Watch reported that it has separately received information about the recent abduction by NLA fighters of at least fourteen Macedonian civilians from the city of Tetovo alone.
"Abductions and illegal detentions by the NLA are rapidly rising." said Elizabeth Andersen, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The NLA has failed to account for at least fourteen Macedonians abducted from Tetovo during the fighting in late July."
Three of the road workers were working near the village of Grupcin on the main Skopje-Tetovo road at about 8 a.m. on Tuesday, August 7, 2001, when they were abducted by uniformed members of the NLA, who came from the woods nearby. The NLA fighters ordered them to walk to a nearby camp, and then brutally abused them. At about noon the same day, the ethnic Albanian rebels abducted two more workers from the same area, and subjected them to similar abuse. Previous incidents in the area suggest that the NLA mistreatment of the road crew was intended to stop the road crew from working on the road.
Human Rights Watch interviewed two of the five workers separately, and found their detailed accounts credible and consistent. The two men showed Human Rights Watch their severe wounds, which were consistent with their accounts.
The abuse started with a severe beating. Then one of the rebels used a knife to carve letters on the Macedonians' backs and to cut them on other parts of their bodies. One of the rebels forced the men to perform oral sex on each other, and tried to anally rape one of the men with a wooden stick. The men were then beaten more before they were driven to a nearby village and released shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday.
One of the men interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated:
One of [the NLA rebels] took a spade and started beating us with the metal part. We were sitting on the ground then. He said to put our palms on our knees, and he started beating us with the spade, trying to hit us in the head. We raised our hands to protect our heads, and everytime we put our hands up, he would beat us on our legs and arms. . . . Then he left, he was probably called away and this other guy came. There were two others, they were standing by our sides with machine guns since the beginning.
The one who came was a bit thin. He had very short hair, and was going a bit bald . . . . He told us to take off our T-shirts. He pulled out a knife, it was a folding knife. Then he asked everyone for their names. He started carving in my back, I didn't know what he was writing, but it was for about five minutes. It was painful, but I couldn't move. I just firmed my body to take the pain.
After the cutting, the NLA fighter ordered the men to lie down, and ordered one of the men to anally rape one of the others with a stick, before grabbing the stick and attempting to rape the man himself with the stick. He then forced the men to perform oral sex on each other. The men were then kept for several hours in pits where they were regularly beaten by the NLA fighters. Before being released, one of the NLA fighters took his pistol, cocked it, and shoved it in the mouth of one of the abducted men, threatening to kill him if he told about the abuse.
Human Rights Watch has confirmed that at least fourteen ethnic Macedonian men were abducted by NLA fighters from the town of Tetovo during heavy fighting in the end of July, and expressed deep concern about the fate of the men.
Human Rights Watch raised the cases of the missing ethnic Macedonians with a regional NLA commander for the Tetovo region, who uses the code name Matoshi, and the commander stated that he had no information about the cases. According to their families, the ethnic Macedonian men were last seen in the custody of NLA fighters. Human Rights Watch is still investigating other reports it has received of abducted Macedonians in NLA-controlled areas in recent days.
"We are deeply concerned about the safety of ethnic Macedonians abducted by the Albanian rebels in recent weeks," said Andersen. "These men should be released now, the NLA must bring those responsible for these serious abuses to account, and take steps to ensure that such crimes cease."
Nine Macedonian soldiers killed by mines Posted August 10, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010810/3/1azcq.html
Friday August 10, 8:32 PM
Nine Macedonian soldiers killed by mines
By Philippa Fletcher
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Nine Macedonian soldiers were killed and five others wounded near Skopje on Friday when their truck ran over mines apparently laid by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, bringing the conflict back to the doorstep of the capital.
A Macedonian army spokesman said the soldiers were on the road between the villages of Ljubanci and Ljuboten, only about five km (three miles) from the outskirts of Skopje.
Eight were killed on the spot and one of six others who were injured died later of his wounds, the spokesman said.
"There were three mines. They have used the road often before and never had any problems," he said by telephone.
The new deaths came after the Macedonian army dropped bombs near the ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo for the first time and as Macedonian families in the southern town of Prilep buried 10 soldiers killed in a previous ambush by the rebels.
The spiral of violence cast serious doubt over the prospect that a newly-agreed peace deal could be signed on schedule on Monday.
"It's not our war. We don't want to fight but we are being pushed into it and that's why we think it's inevitable," said one of a group of soldiers sheltering from scorching sun under a tree at the funeral of one of their comrades.
An ethnic Albanian guerrilla commander in Prsovce, north east of Tetovo, expressed similar mixed feelings at the site where the bombs had left at least three huge craters on the outskirts of the village.
It was one of the first times Macedonia's newly acquired Sukhoi Su-25 jets had dropped bombs, a diplomat said, in what he called a "serious escalation" of the conflict.
"NOW THIS IS WAR"
Another diplomat said the planes appeared to have struck again on Friday morning, bombing the rebel stronghold of Radusa on Macedonia's northern border with Yugoslavia.
"I think we should give peace a chance and respect the agreement," the rebel, codenamed Matoshi, told Reuters in Prsovce, where boulders had been flung 30 or 40 metres (yards) and debris reportedly injured several villagers.
But he also declared: "Now this is war. You can see they are not attacking our positions in the mountains but anywhere."
The bombing followed rebel assaults on a police station and barracks in Tetovo which injured 12 people, including a six-year-old girl. The town fell quiet after around midnight.
The ambush on Wednesday on the highway between Skopje and Tetovo was the bloodiest single incident of the six-month conflict. A mosque in the soldiers' hometown was razed to the ground by a Macedonian mob in retaliation for the killings.
The death toll among the security forces is now around 60, with several dozen others also believed killed, among them rebels and civilians on both sides of the ethnic divide.
Several hundred people attended the first funeral in Prilep. The dead soldier's mother, dressed in black, wept as relatives held her on both sides.
"The authorities should know that he wasn't afraid...I want it to be mentioned in history that my child is a hero and he died heroically, and that's why he will live forever," she said.
At the second funeral, the victim's mother fell down next to the grave, wailing "How can I survive this?" while her son, about six years old, screamed "Daddy! Daddy!"
DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS BATTERED
Diplomats said the next day or so would be pivotal to chances of salvaging the Western-brokered peace accord, initialled by the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political party leaders hours after the deaths of the 10 soldiers.
"It doesn't look good," one diplomat said.
Western powers say they are counting on the rebels agreeing to yield weapons voluntarily to a force of 3,500 NATO soldiers to be deployed once the peace agreement is signed and an amnesty and lasting ceasefire are in place.
Some Macedonian hardliners regard the peace plan as capitulation at gunpoint to demands for more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up about 30 percent of the population. Rebel hardliners also believe their best chance lies in more fighting.
Fighting has made an absurdity of an already ragged ceasefire supposedly in effect since July 5 between government forces and the so-called National Liberation Army. The spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was gravely concerned.
"It is a very alarming picture. The danger of sliding into all-out-war mounts with every incident," Kris Janowski told a news briefing in Geneva.
Macedonian jets hit rebels Posted August 10, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1482000/1482617.stm
Thursday, 9 August, 2001, 20:06 GMT 21:06 UK
Macedonian jets hit rebels
It is the first time Macedonia has used Sukhoi planes Macedonian air force jets have bombed rebel positions around the north-western town of Tetovo, raising serious doubts about a Western-brokered peace plan due to be signed on Monday.
The air attacks followed a day of fighting in Tetovo between Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels, with reports of rocket and small arms fire - and at least 10 civilians injured.
It was the first time Macedonia had made use of the planes, Sukhoi Su-25 fighters, which it bought earlier this year from the Ukraine.
Francois Leotard, the European Union's peace mediator, had already admitted that the agreement initialled by the two sides could be jeopardised by the latest fighting.
"I remain very cautious, I can't deny that, because if the situation continues to deteriorate on the ground, what has been established and concluded on paper could be called into question," he said.
Meanwhile, Macedonian army chief of staff General Pande Petrovski has been sacked, a statement from President Boris Trajkovski's office said.
His dismissal follows a rebel attack on a military convoy on Wednesday in which 10 Macedonian soldiers were killed, the worst day's tally of casualties so far in the conflict.
The latest fighting in Tetovo was described by a Macedonian army spokesman as some of the fiercest yet.
Macedonian radio said Tetovo resembled a ghost town, with reports of shooting and explosions in the morning and afternoon.
The government has accused the rebels of trying to clear Macedonians from their area of control.
After Wednesday's death toll, another Macedonian policeman was killed overnight in the north-western village of Rataje. Macedonian news agency MIA said the policeman was killed in a rebel attack.
Breakthrough
In face of the upsurge of violence, Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski, seen as a moderate, has called on Macedonians to "give peace a chance".
"This is a moment at which we decide the destiny of our country. Although we are full of sorrow and pain, we mustn't take leave of our senses and make decisions under the influence of strong emotions," he said.
The renewed fighting came after a breakthrough in the peace talks on Wednesday, when Western envoys persuaded Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders to initial an accord after 12 days of talks.
The deal is designed to grant ethnic Albanians, who make up about a third of Macedonia's population, new rights.
Nato has pledged to send in a 3,500-member force to oversee the disarming of the rebels if and when the final deal is signed.
Macedonia Faces 10 Funerals as Fighting Escalates Posted August 10, 2001
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/wl/balkans_macedonia_dc.html
Thursday August 9 7:17 PM ET
Macedonia Faces 10 Funerals as Fighting Escalates
By Alister Doyle
SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonian families Friday will bury 10 soldiers killed in an ambush by ethnic Albanian guerrillas against a desolate backdrop for a new peace plan after bombing raids by Macedonian jets.
The 10 will be laid to rest in their home town, Prilep, in the south. They were killed Wednesday on the highway between Skopje and the northwestern town of Tetovo in the bloodiest clash of the six-month conflict.
Fighting has ravaged the Tetovo area since the killings, battering diplomatic efforts to avert a new Balkan war.
A diplomat and witnesses said Sukhoi Su-25 jets dropped bombs on rebel-held areas northeast of Tetovo Thursday night after guerrilla assaults on a city police station and barracks.
A defense ministry source denied the jets had dropped bombs, saying they were merely flying over the area. Tetovo streets were quiet around midnight after 12 people, including a six-year-old girl, were injured.
``This is a serious escalation of the fighting,'' the diplomat said of what he described as two sorties by Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft over northwestern Macedonia -- one of the first uses of planes in the six-month conflict.
Hours after the deaths of the 10 soldiers, leaders of the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties initialed a Western-brokered peace deal and expressed hopes of a signing ceremony Monday.
Western powers say they are counting on the rebels agreeing to yield weapons voluntarily to a force of 3,500 NATO (news - web sites) soldiers to be deployed once the peace agreement is signed and an amnesty and lasting cease-fire are in place.
'DOESN'T LOOK GOOD'
Diplomats said that the next day or so will be pivotal to chances for salvaging the peace accord.
``It doesn't look good,'' one said.
Macedonians' expected outpouring of emotion at the funerals of the 10 killed in Prilep could inflame ethnic tensions anew. A Prilep mosque was razed to the ground by a mob hours after the killings of the soldiers.
Some Macedonian hard-liners regard the peace plan as capitulation at gunpoint to demands for more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up about 30 percent of the population. Rebel hard-liners also believe their best chance lies in more fighting.
The peace plan would grant more rights to ethnic Albanians including wider use of the Albanian language, more jobs in the police force, reforms to education and to the constitution.
Fighting has made an absurdity of an already ragged cease-fire supposedly in effect since July 5 between government forces and the so-called National Liberation Army.
In an ominous sign, Albanian media in neighboring Kosovo received a fax from a hitherto unknown group calling itself the Albanian National Army (ANA).
It said a special unit of the ANA-NLA carried out the attack on the soldiers to avenge the killings of five rebels shot dead in a police raid in Skopje Tuesday.
And it urged all rebels to keep fighting. It was unclear whether the message was a hoax or revealed a new radical splinter group.
A crowd of about 200 nationalist Macedonians demonstrated outside parliament in Skopje Thursday night, a day after about 1,000 people attacked shops owned by ethnic Albanians in protest at the killings of the soldiers.
The state news agency MIA said 46 people were arrested in Wednesday's unrest.
(With additional reporting by Philippa Fletcher and Ana Petruseva in Skopje, Fredrik Dahl and Shaban Buza in Pristina)
Macedonia: Amnesty International appeals to all parties to protect civilian populations Posted August 10, 2001
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/e029af9738c8c5fd85256aa4005f2b93?OpenDocument
Source: Amnesty International Date: 10 Aug 2001
Macedonia: Amnesty International appeals to all parties to protect civilian populations
AI Index: EUR 65/004/2001
Amnesty International is concerned at the massive increase in human rights violations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia), despite the government's announcement on 7 August that a peace agreement would be signed by all political parties on 13 August.
Since the announcement, there have been daily reports of violations, including extrajudicial killings, by the Macedonian police forces, while the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) has reportedly abducted and ill-treated civilians, some of whom are being held hostage.
"All parties involved should respect international human rights and abide by their obligation to respect the Geneva conventions, which forbid the murder and torture of civilians, and the taking of hostages," said Amnesty International.
On 7 August, according to credible reports received by Amnesty International, extrajudicial executions took place when Macedonian police killed two ethnic Albanians and three Albanian nationals in a raid on a house in Skopje and detained five others, alleging that they were preparing a terrorist attack.
In retaliation, the NLA abducted five civilian construction-workers -- four Macedonians and one Rom -- on the same day. The five were released the following day. They alleged they had been ill-treated by the NLA. On 9 August the NLA reportedly abducted another six Macedonian civilians from a village near Tetovo.
After ten Macedonian soldiers were killed, reportedly by the NLA, in an ambush near Tetovo on 8 August, the fighting between the NLA and the Macedonian security forces in Tetovo intensified. Amnesty International is concerned about the reported killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians during these clashes. The organization is further concerned about reports from the Tetovo hospital that a three-year-old Macedonian girl and her father were injured in the fighting.
Background
Following the death of the 10 soldiers on 8 August, in Prilep, the soldiers' home-town, shops owned by Muslims - including Turks, Roma and Bosniaks - were looted, and the mosque was burned to the ground, reportedly by crowds of Macedonian men in revenge for the death of the soldiers. In Skopje, on the same day, several hundred Macedonian Slavs allegedly looted Albanian shops in protest against the announcement of the peace agreement. Amnesty International calls on the Macedonian authorities to conduct prompt and impartial investigations, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Amnesty International also recommends that the police and judicial authorities in Macedonia exercise due diligence to prevent ethnically motivated violence. The authorities should also make clear that such violence is a criminal offence and will not be tolerated.
Despite negotiations and cease-fire agreements, clashes continue between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Macedonian police and military forces. The NLA claims that its aims are to secure the political, social and economic rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, who make up between a quarter and a third of the country's population. Since the first clashes between the NLA and Macedonian police in January 2001, fighting has taken place in the villages of the Shar mountains to the north of the predominantly Albanian town of Tetovo in the west of Macedonia, and around Kumanovo in the north of the country near the border with Kosovo.
The violence continued even after the formation of a government of national unity in May, which includes the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties. In June, the European Union and the United States appointed special envoys to facilitate talks between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanian parties. On 5 July a cease-fire was agreed between the Macedonian security forces and the NLA, and the dialogue between the political parties continued. This cease-fire has been breached constantly during the peace negotiations, but, after many setbacks, the political parties agreed that they would sign the peace agreement on 13 August.
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW web : http://www.amnesty.org
Amnesty International is impartial and independent of any government, political persuasion or religious creed.
© Amnesty Internationalhttp://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/e029af9738c8c5fd85256aa4005f2b93?OpenDocument
Source: Amnesty International Date: 10 Aug 2001
Macedonia: Amnesty International appeals to all parties to protect civilian populations
AI Index: EUR 65/004/2001
Amnesty International is concerned at the massive increase in human rights violations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia), despite the government's announcement on 7 August that a peace agreement would be signed by all political parties on 13 August.
Since the announcement, there have been daily reports of violations, including extrajudicial killings, by the Macedonian police forces, while the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) has reportedly abducted and ill-treated civilians, some of whom are being held hostage.
"All parties involved should respect international human rights and abide by their obligation to respect the Geneva conventions, which forbid the murder and torture of civilians, and the taking of hostages," said Amnesty International.
On 7 August, according to credible reports received by Amnesty International, extrajudicial executions took place when Macedonian police killed two ethnic Albanians and three Albanian nationals in a raid on a house in Skopje and detained five others, alleging that they were preparing a terrorist attack.
In retaliation, the NLA abducted five civilian construction-workers -- four Macedonians and one Rom -- on the same day. The five were released the following day. They alleged they had been ill-treated by the NLA. On 9 August the NLA reportedly abducted another six Macedonian civilians from a village near Tetovo.
After ten Macedonian soldiers were killed, reportedly by the NLA, in an ambush near Tetovo on 8 August, the fighting between the NLA and the Macedonian security forces in Tetovo intensified. Amnesty International is concerned about the reported killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians during these clashes. The organization is further concerned about reports from the Tetovo hospital that a three-year-old Macedonian girl and her father were injured in the fighting.
Background
Following the death of the 10 soldiers on 8 August, in Prilep, the soldiers' home-town, shops owned by Muslims - including Turks, Roma and Bosniaks - were looted, and the mosque was burned to the ground, reportedly by crowds of Macedonian men in revenge for the death of the soldiers. In Skopje, on the same day, several hundred Macedonian Slavs allegedly looted Albanian shops in protest against the announcement of the peace agreement. Amnesty International calls on the Macedonian authorities to conduct prompt and impartial investigations, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Amnesty International also recommends that the police and judicial authorities in Macedonia exercise due diligence to prevent ethnically motivated violence. The authorities should also make clear that such violence is a criminal offence and will not be tolerated.
Despite negotiations and cease-fire agreements, clashes continue between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Macedonian police and military forces. The NLA claims that its aims are to secure the political, social and economic rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, who make up between a quarter and a third of the country's population. Since the first clashes between the NLA and Macedonian police in January 2001, fighting has taken place in the villages of the Shar mountains to the north of the predominantly Albanian town of Tetovo in the west of Macedonia, and around Kumanovo in the north of the country near the border with Kosovo.
The violence continued even after the formation of a government of national unity in May, which includes the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties. In June, the European Union and the United States appointed special envoys to facilitate talks between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanian parties. On 5 July a cease-fire was agreed between the Macedonian security forces and the NLA, and the dialogue between the political parties continued. This cease-fire has been breached constantly during the peace negotiations, but, after many setbacks, the political parties agreed that they would sign the peace agreement on 13 August.
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW web : http://www.amnesty.org
Amnesty International is impartial and independent of any government, political persuasion or religious creed.
© Amnesty Internationalhttp://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/e029af9738c8c5fd85256aa4005f2b93?OpenDocument
Source: Amnesty International Date: 10 Aug 2001
Macedonia: Amnesty International appeals to all parties to protect civilian populations
AI Index: EUR 65/004/2001
Amnesty International is concerned at the massive increase in human rights violations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia), despite the government's announcement on 7 August that a peace agreement would be signed by all political parties on 13 August.
Since the announcement, there have been daily reports of violations, including extrajudicial killings, by the Macedonian police forces, while the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) has reportedly abducted and ill-treated civilians, some of whom are being held hostage.
"All parties involved should respect international human rights and abide by their obligation to respect the Geneva conventions, which forbid the murder and torture of civilians, and the taking of hostages," said Amnesty International.
On 7 August, according to credible reports received by Amnesty International, extrajudicial executions took place when Macedonian police killed two ethnic Albanians and three Albanian nationals in a raid on a house in Skopje and detained five others, alleging that they were preparing a terrorist attack.
In retaliation, the NLA abducted five civilian construction-workers -- four Macedonians and one Rom -- on the same day. The five were released the following day. They alleged they had been ill-treated by the NLA. On 9 August the NLA reportedly abducted another six Macedonian civilians from a village near Tetovo.
After ten Macedonian soldiers were killed, reportedly by the NLA, in an ambush near Tetovo on 8 August, the fighting between the NLA and the Macedonian security forces in Tetovo intensified. Amnesty International is concerned about the reported killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians during these clashes. The organization is further concerned about reports from the Tetovo hospital that a three-year-old Macedonian girl and her father were injured in the fighting.
Background
Following the death of the 10 soldiers on 8 August, in Prilep, the soldiers' home-town, shops owned by Muslims - including Turks, Roma and Bosniaks - were looted, and the mosque was burned to the ground, reportedly by crowds of Macedonian men in revenge for the death of the soldiers. In Skopje, on the same day, several hundred Macedonian Slavs allegedly looted Albanian shops in protest against the announcement of the peace agreement. Amnesty International calls on the Macedonian authorities to conduct prompt and impartial investigations, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Amnesty International also recommends that the police and judicial authorities in Macedonia exercise due diligence to prevent ethnically motivated violence. The authorities should also make clear that such violence is a criminal offence and will not be tolerated.
Despite negotiations and cease-fire agreements, clashes continue between the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Macedonian police and military forces. The NLA claims that its aims are to secure the political, social and economic rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, who make up between a quarter and a third of the country's population. Since the first clashes between the NLA and Macedonian police in January 2001, fighting has taken place in the villages of the Shar mountains to the north of the predominantly Albanian town of Tetovo in the west of Macedonia, and around Kumanovo in the north of the country near the border with Kosovo.
The violence continued even after the formation of a government of national unity in May, which includes the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties. In June, the European Union and the United States appointed special envoys to facilitate talks between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanian parties. On 5 July a cease-fire was agreed between the Macedonian security forces and the NLA, and the dialogue between the political parties continued. This cease-fire has been breached constantly during the peace negotiations, but, after many setbacks, the political parties agreed that they would sign the peace agreement on 13 August.
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NEW RIFT IN MACEDONIAN LEADERSHIP? Posted August 10, 2001
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 151, Part II, 10 August 2001
http://www.rferl.org/newsline
END NOTE
NEW RIFT IN MACEDONIAN LEADERSHIP?
By Ulrich Buechsenschuetz
Macedonia's government of "national unity" has displayed its lack of unity before. During the three months of its existence, there have been a number of occasions when members of the government have accused each other of various blunders when struggling to cope with the threat posed by the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (UCK).
There have open clashes between hard-line Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Movement-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) on the one hand, and Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) on the other. There have also been disagreements between VMRO leader and Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and Boskovski on one side, and President Boris Trajkovski -- of the same party -- on the other.
These disagreements derived mainly from different approaches as to how to deal with the crisis. While the hard- liners Georgievski and Boskovski prefer a military solution, Trajkovski and Buckovski advocate a peaceful one. The ethnic Albanian political parties in the current cabinet did not become involved in these conflicts within the government. Despite immense pressure from the UCK, which limits their room to maneuver, the Albanian "bloc" has even profited from the strife within the Macedonian "bloc," as media describe the ethnic divide in the government.
"Mister Butch" and "Mister Bosh" -- as former Interior and Foreign Minister Ljubomir Frckovski has called Buckovski and Boskovski, respectively, in newspaper comments -- overcame their public differences when it became clear that their feud was weakening the government.
After some weeks without any major disagreements in the government (or did the media simply come to ignore the feuding?), a new rift opened -- just at the moment when the peace talks seemed to be drawing to a close.
On 6 August, Trajkovski scheduled a meeting of the National Security Council. After that session, both the president and the defense minister denied that there were any differences between them. The next day, the media speculated about the reasons for the meeting. Some of the media reported that Trajkovski had called the Security Council gathering because his order to the army to open up an important road between Tetovo and the border to Kosova had not been obeyed.
The road runs from Tetovo to the border checkpoint at Jazince and lies in a demilitarized zone, which was set up recently in order to help facilitate the peace talks. In a statement on 6 August, the Defense Ministry denied that Trajkovski had given it any orders to open up the road. The ministry also denied the allegation that neither the Defense Ministry nor the General Staff had worked out a plan to defend the town of Tetovo, which has been at the center of tensions for months.
While Trajkovski and Buckovski declared after the council session that there are no differences between them, the Skopje daily "Nova Makedonija" had already launched a fierce attack on Buckovski. In a front-page article, the newspaper -- which is close to the VMRO-DPMNE -- stated that there is a deep rift between president and defense minister.
The article claimed that Buckovski called Trajkovski on the phone, saying: "Who are you to issue such orders. If you issue another such order, I will have you arrested and brought to [the Skopje jail] Idrizovo." Buckovski, "Nova Makedonija" says, works together with the [ethnic Albanian] "terrorist mafia groups." How else could one explain that the Defense Ministry several times ignored the [VMRO-DPMNE-run] Interior Ministry's call for support in its fight against the UCK?
All this, according to "Nova Makedonija," is part of a "petty game of the SDSM, in which the whole state loses. The VMRO-DPMNE has publicly stated repeatedly that the Social Democrats are courting the Albanian political bloc and, in any event, are interested in signing a [peace] agreement in order to have early elections and form a coalition with the Albanian parties."
In a comment for the same newspaper, Dimitar Kjurkciev accused Branko Crvenkovski, the leader of the SDSM, of having never given up his role as an opposition leader, even after his party joined the government in May. First, Crvenkovski had pressed for the formation of the "national unity government" and then he encouraged labor unrest at a most inconvenient time. Crvenkovski had also constantly hindered the government from taking decisive military action against the ethnic Albanian rebels of the UCK, Kjurkciev added.
It seems that the VMRO-DPMNE leadership is looking for a scapegoat. By blaming the SDSM for allegedly cooperating with the Albanian parties (and the West), Georgievski and his hard-line followers want to show the electorate that if an unpopular peace agreement is signed, it is not their doing.
Crvenkovski and his SDSM, on the other hand, are in a comfortable position. Whatever the outcome of the peace talks may be, the SDSM will be among the winners. The party gained the confidence of the West as a cooperative partner in the negotiations, and they presented themselves as a possible partner for a future coalition with the ethnic Albanian political parties. Months of belligerent rhetoric have eliminated this option for the VMRO-DPMNE. That means that early elections would inevitably lead to the political defeat of Georgievski's nationalist and conservative party.
And perhaps most importantly for some of that party's faithful, a political defeat would also mean that the VMRO- DPMNE would lose the economic advantages that it built up during its years in power.
It is hard to assess what would be more painful for the party members: the loss of power or the loss of the "gravy train." And it is also hard to assess whether the SDSM will change its behavior once it has defeated its main Macedonian rival. As a Western diplomat put it, the SDSM leadership is as greedy as the VMRO-DPMNE leadership, but they are more skilled in concealing that fact.
MOSQUE SET ON FIRE, [Albanian] SHOPS DEMOLISHED IN MACEDONIAN TOWN. Posted August 9, 2001
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 150, Part II, 9 August 2001
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MOSQUE SET ON FIRE, SHOPS DEMOLISHED IN MACEDONIAN TOWN.
Following the reports of the killing of the 10 soldiers, Interior Minister Ljube Buckovski imposed a 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew on Prilep, where most of the 10 came from, dpa reported on 8 August. Several hundred Macedonians nonetheless demanded weapons to attack a neighboring Albanian village "in order to save Macedonia," Deutsche Welle's Bosnian Service reported. When their request was denied, the crowd set fire to a mosque in central Prilep and ransacked a number of shops owned by Albanian and other Muslim Macedonians. Similar riots took place in Bitola earlier this year after some local men were killed by Albanian fighters (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 2 May 2001). UB/PM
ALBANIAN SHOPS DESTROYED IN MACEDONIAN CAPITAL.
Several hundred Macedonian citizens who had been forced to leave their villages some weeks ago staged a peaceful protest in front of the Macedonian parliament in Skopje on 8 August. The crowd had gathered to mourn the 10 dead soldiers. As the Skopje daily "Dnevnik" on 9 August reported, the protesters were later joined by a crowd of young Skopje citizens, who later destroyed several Albanian-owned shops in the city center. UB
Key minister backs peace deal but violence continues Posted August 9, 2001
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010809/1/1atw2.html
Friday August 10, 12:17 AM
Key minister backs peace deal but violence continues
Macedonia's defense minister called on his nation to put bitterness aside and support a peace deal with the country's ethnic Albanian minority, but ongoing violence jeopardized chances the Western-mediated agreement can be signed next week as planned.
"Let us give peace a chance," Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski said during a news conference on Thursday, called after rioters attacked ethnic Albanian shops in retaliation for a rebel ambush Wednesday that killed 10 Macedonian soldiers.
"May this major tragedy mark the end of the war and not the beginning of a bloody civil war," said Buckovski.
"It is very difficult in these moments to find words to demand from people that they show patience and think of peace," Buckovski said, before adding: "Believe me, the situation will be even more difficult if war comes to our homes."
But with sporadic fighting continuing between rebels and government forces in ethnic Albanian areas of northwest Macedonia, it appeared far from certain Thursday if cooler heads would prevail so that a peace accord initialled by leaders of both communities late Wednesday can be signed Monday on schedule.
Fighting erupted overnight in the flashpoint town of Tetovo, where a soldier was killed and an army barracks was attacked on Thursday.
An army spokesman, Blagoja Markovski, warned Thursday that the situation was worsening in the Tetovo area.
"The citizens have to understand that there are only two options: all-out civil war or preserving a unified state, using all possible political and military measures," Markovski said.
He said the military had sent helicopters and additional troops to Tetovo.
The peace agreement, worked out under intense pressure from US and European mediators, calls for use of Albanian as an official language, police reforms in Albanian areas and the deployment of 3,500 NATO troops to disarm rebels of the self-styled National Liberation Army (NLA).
European Union envoy Francois Leotard underscored the threat that the peace deal could still unravel.
"I remain very cautious. If the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate, what has been agreed and concluded on paper could be thrown into question," Leotard told France's Europe 1 radio.
He also warned that the planned NATO deployment would not go ahead unless "there is an effective truce" and cautioned that there had still been no assurances given by the NLA -- which did not participate in the peace talks -- that they would accept the deal.
In Wednesday's ambush, the deadliest single act of bloodshed in the six-month-old conflict, NLA fighters opened fire on a Macedonian army convoy travelling from Skopje to the main town in the northwest, Tetovo.
Eight army reservists and two officers were killed and two soldiers wounded. Army chief of staff General Pande Petrovski was relieved of his duties after he took responsibility for the deaths.
Hundreds of Macedonians took to the streets in protest at the killing.