Macedonian ceasefire crumbles as peace talks Stall

08/04/2001| IslamWeb

TETOVO, Macedonia, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -Macedonia's fragile ceasefire between ethnic Albanian fighters and government forces started to crumble Sunday as peace talks ran into deadlock on the issue of making Albanian an official language.
A convoy transporting Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski came under fire, four Macedonian soldiers were shot and injured and an army barracks was attacked in the flashpoint town of Tetovo in separate incidents.
Meanwhile, police in neighbouring Albania said they had seized a truck loaded with weapons -- including four ground-to-ground missiles -- apparently destined for Macedonia's ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army.
And a Macedonian woman and her son were killed when a mine exploded under their vehicle on the road leading from Tetovo to Kosovo which the Albanians and the Slav-dominated army have fought over in recent days.
The violence overshadowed talks between Macedonia's ruling Slav and ethnic Albanian parties in the southern town of Ohrid that were showing little sign of progress despite intensive mediation by EU and US envoys Francois Leotard and James Pardew.
The office of President Boris Trajkovski, who is hosting the talks between Macedonia's four ruling Slav and ethnic Albanian parties in his summer residence, far from the unrest, said the talks would go into their third day Monday.
An accord is seen as the only way to stave off a civil war that has been threatening the Balkans republic since the armed ethnic Albanian revolt for equal rights began in February.
But a source in Trajkosvki's delegation said: "The talks are slow and tough and the major obstacle is the language demand."
In a sign of the differences still to be narrowed, Sunday's talks were conducted without a full roundtable session.
The Western envoys were holding the negotiations together by shuttling between both sides in bid to find a compromise on an ethnic Albanian demand that Albanian be made an official language alongside Macedonian.
The Slav parties fear conceding to this would create a de facto Albanian state in the northwest of the small republic, along the borders with Kosovo and Albania. Many of the ethnic Albanians who make up around 30 percent of Macedonia's population live in this area.(Read photo caption below)
A source in Leotard and Pardew's entourage said the language demand was proving to be "a tricky issue".
Zahir Bekteshi, the spokesman of one of the parties, the PDP, confirmed that agreement was still some distance away, saying "nothing is settled."
He also pointed out that both sides had yet to discuss the other outstanding demand: that an independent ethnic Albanian police force be created in certain areas.
While a July 5 ceasefire rescued from extinction by NATO this week continued to hold, cracks were appearing.
An Albanain commander known as Hoxha, who is based just north of the capital Skopje, told AFP late Saturday: "We are respecting the ceasefire, but we are not relaxing our guard. We're preparing for the worst if there's no political agreement."
He said that if an accord was reached, "we are ready to drop our arms immediately, but if they (the Macedonian authorities) want a war, they'll get it."
That prospect loomed closer with Sunday's attacks.
PHOTO CAPTION:
An elderly ethnic Albanian man walks in front of his destroyed house in the village of Arachinovo, near the capital Skopje on July 29, 2001. More than 5,000 ethnic Albanian refugees returned back to their homes in Arachinovo, one of the former strongholds of the Albanian fighters, now under the control of the Slav-dominated Macedonian government forces. (Oleg Popov/Reuters)