[ALBSA-Info] Russia blames West for Macedonia turmoil

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Russia blames West for Macedonia turmoil

  
SKOPJE, March 21 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on 
Wednesday that the West's tolerance of ethnic Albanian rebels has helped fuel 
the conflict in Macedonia. 

"Passive reaction by the West to the spread of the Kosovo conflict to the 
Albanian-populated regions (of Macedonia)...only helps the separatists (to) 
go unpunished and be more radical in their actions," Ivanov told reporters in 
the Macedonian capital Skopje. 

He said that neither air bombardment nor a massive military presence - which 
NATO used in the Kosovo crisis to protect the majority ethnic Albanian 
community there from Yugoslav forces - could solve the region's problems. 

It was up to the Balkan states to forge a pact under international auspices 
saying that borders could not be changed and that territorial integrity would 
be respected. 

The regional states, he said, should also take up an obligation to prevent 
use of their territories to prepare "terrorist or similar activity" against 
neighbours. 

In Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ordzhonikidze said in an 
address to the United Nations Human Rights Commission the NATO action in 
Kosovo against the Yugoslav army and police "did not solve a single 
humanitarian problem." 

He said it had instead "served as a catalyst for human rights violations and 
led the extremists to believe that they can reach their selfish goals by 
means of weapons and terrorist acts on the one hand and unscrupulous 
manipulation of public opinion on the other." 

"The evolution of the situation in the Balkans reaffirms the fact that 
'humanitarian intervention' by means of force without sanction from the 
(U.N.) Security Council and in breach of the principles of the U.N. Charter 
is contrary to strengthening human rights protection and protecting national 
minorities," he said. 

Ordzhonikidze added that the international community "needs to take immediate 
and decisive measures to prevent a new conflict and its spreading over the 
entire Balkans region...." 

The Macedonian government says the guerrillas it is fighting in the hills 
around the town of Tetovo for the past week are ethnic Albanians infiltrating 
from Kosovo, a Serbian province run by a U.N. administration.