EU Envoy Starts Macedonia Mission

28/03/2001| IslamWeb

SKOPJE, Macedonia (Islamweb & Agencies) - The European Union's new Balkans envoy, Francois Leotard, (photo) met Friday with Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski on the first step of his mission aimed at averting a new war in the Balkans.
Macedonian troops fired occasional machine-gun and mortar rounds at ethnic Albanian fighters positions just above the city of Tetovo, but reporters said there were no fresh skirmishes in the northeast.
In Brussels, NATO said it had given final approval to a plan to send up to 3,000 troops to Macedonia to collect and destroy the weapons of ethnic Albanian fighters.
The force would only go once a lasting cease-fire had been declared and a political agreement reached between Macedonian political parties -- the task Leotard is due to facilitate.
Western nations have been engaged in intensive diplomacy to try to halt the four-month-old revolt for equal rights by the Ethnic Albanian Muslims in Macedonia.
Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders have been discussing ways to improve minority rights to undercut the four-month-old uprising, but talks have stalled.
The latest meeting was disrupted Monday when armed police reservists stormed into parliament during a nationalist riot and participants in the talks were evacuated through a back door.
Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski said on Friday he had ordered demobilization of some police reservists.
LEOTARD STARTED WITH A SNAG
The Albanians are demanding a more formalized international participation, something the Macedonian side has so far resisted, fearing it will play into their opponents' hands, but diplomats say such a move is crucial to get negotiations moving.
Another Leotard task is to avoid the prospect of NATO getting dragged into yet another conflict in former Yugoslavia.
NATO has had what it calls ``technical'' contacts with the Albanians, brokering a deal this week to end an army onslaught in a strategic village.
CIVILIANS SUFFER
NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur told Reuters in Brussels that 15 of the 19 NATO member countries, including the United States, had pledged to take part in the operation under which 3,000 NATO troops would come to help disarm the Albanians.
About 100,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanian villagers, have been displaced. Thousands of others remain trapped in the northern hills held by the Albanians in conditions described by some aid workers as close to a humanitarian catastrophe.
In Kosovo, the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force said 20 suspected fighters from Macedonia were detained Thursday near the border. Three of them had gunshot wounds.