[AMCC-News] Ethnic Albanian civilians shot by Macedonian police forces

[Mentor Cana]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/502229.asp

Macedonia ethnic tensions escalate

Ethnic Albanian civilians shot by Macedonian police forces

A Macedonian policeman gestures over the bodies of two ethnic Albanians
shot dead in Tetovo on Thursday.

TETOVO, Macedonia, March 22 —  Macedonia’s multi-ethnic population was on
edge on Thursday after government shot dead two civilians in the center of
the country’s second-largest city. The deaths came after the Macedonian
government refused to negotiate with ethnic Albanian guerrillas launching
an insurgency, and stepped up army attacks on rebel positions.

Maceda reports from the scene of the shooting in Tetovo. Maceda on the new
offensive against Macedonian rebels.

NBC’s JIM MACEDA reported from the scene of the shooting in Tetovo that
the area remained tense after police cordoned off the city center.
Macedonian police stopped a car during the morning and opened fire when
its occupants appeared to hurl an object that looked like a hand grenade
at a sandbagged position.

The two men were killed on the spot, riddled with bullets.

Flak-jacketed police cradling submachine guns later set up roadblocks and
were searching all vehicles entering and leaving the town.

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski, who is invited to attend an EU
summit in Stockholm on Friday, said the main political parties agreed in
late-night talks “on the need to neutralize the terrorist threat quickly.”

Macedonian guns started firing on rebel-held hills, ignoring a unilateral
cease-fire declared by the guerrillas Wednesday in an effort to delay a
threatened government assault.

A rebel spokesman contacted by Reuters denied Macedonian police claims
that the guerrillas were retreating without a fight and had abandoned
village strongholds to withdraw over the mountain border into Kosovo.

A Macedonian special policeman fights with a man in Tetovo on Thursday.
Shortly after the scuffle, the man was shot and killed by Macedonian
forces.

The village of Gracani, northwest of Skopje, appeared to be in rebel hands
after a substantial force entered overnight, residents in the vicinity said.

Police sealed off Gracani after one officer was wounded in the shooting
that ensued. The rebels said one of their number was also hit. The village
is close to the border with Kosovo, about 10 miles from Skopje and well
east of Tetovo.

The rebels say they are fighting to improve the rights of the large ethnic
Albanian minority. Macedonia says they are separatists from neighboring
Kosovo.

CEASE-FIRE A GLIMMER OF HOPE A ministerial delegation from the European
Union arrived in Skopje as the government bombardment resumed.

The boom of detonations could be heard at the airport 25 miles away, but
the EU still saw some glimmer of hope that the spiraling violence could be
halted.

“I think that a cease-fire is always a positive thing. We were very
pleased when we heard yesterday that the people from the mountains called
a cease-fire,” EU security chief Javier Solana told a news conference.

“But clearly in this region we’ve seen a lot of statements about
cease-fires,” he added.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on the rebels to engage in dialogue. “They should heed the call of the Security Council, which yesterday unanimously condemned extremist violence, including terrorist activities, and appealed for dialogue among all legitimate parties,” Annan told a news conference, during which he announced he would seek a second, five-year term as secretary-general.

Artillery fire in the stretch of mountainous territory bordering Kosovo began Thursday morning and appeared to be a rejection of the “unilateral, unlimited cease-fire” proposed by the rebel National Liberation Army Wednesday night.

Reporters heard a steady series of impacts, apparently targeting rebel rear positions in the Sar Planina range.

The rebel offer stopped short of meeting Macedonian demands that the guerrillas pull out of mountain villages and positions they had occupied.

Wednesday’s guerrilla truce, hard on the heels of statements of defiance, was a surprise.

It presented the government and the West with the difficult choice of acquiescing in rebel control of territory for the sake of calm, or carrying on fighting and risk alienating the Albanian community in fragile, multiethnic Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic of about 2.1 million people.

U.S. TO SEND PREDATORS

The government appeared to have been given a green light for tough action earlier this week by Western powers, which have strongly condemned the rebels as a small group of extremists bent on fomenting civil war in pursuit of separatist aims.

Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said six major powers that had dealt with Balkan crises for most of the past decade would show “zero tolerance” for deliberate ethnic violence.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved a deployment order for a unit of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles to the Balkans, at the request of NATO. Pentagon officials said the unit consists of 2 or 3 UAVs, plus 80 additional people to run, repair and control them.

Spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said no decision has been made yet on where the unit will be based in the region. It is expected, however, the UAVs will become part of NATO operations in Kosovo near the border with Macedonia.

The UAVs are expected to arrive in theater next week. Pentagon officials said part of the reason to introduce UAVs now, aside from the NATO request, is due to weather conditions. During winter months, cloud cover obscures much of the terrain, making it nearly impossible for the Predators to operate.