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Macedonia: New flash point
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THE deadly clashes that have erupted inside the ethnic Albanian towns and villages of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia risk starting a civil war could drag in the tiny Balkan state's more powerful neighbours and threaten the stability of the entire region.
Long neglected by military strategists as a small, peaceful and largely inconsequential player in the Balkans, Macedonia is now belatedly at the forefront of an international effort to halt the conflict before it becomes an all-out war.
Macedonian troops yesterday blasted two houses close to the Tetovo city football stadium with heavy artillery and machinegun fire.
Troops with armoured personnel carriers and firing from behind a wall of white sandbags directed long volleys of fire into the houses, which were blazing and belching heavy smoke.
There was no immediate sign of a major assault by government forces on the suspected hillside positions of ethnic Albanian rebels above the city of Tetovo.
On Monday the army brought up tanks and several hundred troops and a government spokesman said a "final operation" was being readied to oust the rebels, Reuters reported.
Many vehicles carrying security men and weaponry are seen on their way from Macedonian capital Skopje to the northwestern town of Tetovo, Macedonia's second largest city, which lies more than 70 kilometres (40 miles) from the Kosovo-Macedonia border.
The security forces will soon stage "a final operation to destroy the terrorists", government spokesman Antonion Milosovski said. Macedonian officials also said the next two days will be crucial to wipe out the terrorists.
They said security forces have crashed a number of rebel strongholds on the outskirts of Tetovo for the past few days. The rebels suffered great casualties in their weakened offensive. They started to withdraw from their positions, but some are still fighting back from underground tunnels.
Root cause
The root of the problem is the resentment among the country's Albanian minority who make up about a quarter of the population of two million.
Unlike Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the two sides have avoided outright confrontation, in part because of co-operation between the main Macedonian and Albanian political parties, which are partners in the ruling coalition. The peace was shattered last month, however, when Albanian nationalist gunmen, calling themselves the National Liberation Army (NLA), started an insurgency from neighbouring Kosovo. What began as a minor border clash high up in the mountain villages has spread quickly to Tetovo, and other villages near Skopje.
The NLA began fighting a month ago to try to win constitutional changes to guarantee ethnic rights within a binational federation for ethnic Albanians. Albanian political leaders close to the guerrillas deny that the NLA wants Albanians to belong to an independent Kosovo or that its fighters include former Kosovo liberation fighters.
New flash point
Macedonians talk darkly today about the division of their country along ethnic lines and express worries that Skopje, their small and, until recently, sleepy capital, will be split in two. The implications of a civil war go far beyond Macedonia's borders. The country is a key transit point for the region, linking Serbia and Kosovo to the Greek port of Salonika. Without a stable Macedonia, it is hard to imagine how the Nato-led force in Kosovo will be supplied. Of greater concern is the warning issued by Bulgaria, which has already sent tonnes of military supplies and offered to send troops to support Macedonia.
Privately, Bulgarian officials have said that if the country did have a civil war it would intervene on the side of the Macedonians. Similar warnings have come from Greece and Serbia.
There is also increasing pressure on Nato and the European Union to come to Macedonia's assistance. During the Kosovo conflict Macedonia was praised by the West for taking in hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees from Kosovo. The authorities also allowed Nato to build up its forces in Macedonia before their deployment in Kosovo.
West blamed
Putin echoed Skopje's charges that the rebels are based in Kosovo and blamed the West for not having been tough enough on Kosovo's Albanian extremists at the outset when NATO and the UN moved into the province in June 1999 to halt a Serb campaign of repression against Albanians.
"Having armed illegal Albanian separatists, today no one knows what to do. The situation there is out of control," Putin said.
An article in Britain's Observer newspaper on March 11, citing senior European officers within KFOR, stated: “The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.”
One European K-For battalion commander is quoted saying, “The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Now he's gone the US State Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army... Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US support for the radical Albanians. US policy was and still is out of step with the other Nato allies,” he adds.
Separation condemned
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said on Monday Belgrade fully supported neighbouring Macedonia.
"Yugoslavia gives its full support to the citizens of Macedonia in their effort to defend the country. They have been under pressure from the most extremist Albanian elements," Svilanovic told reporters after talks here with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov.
The events in Macedonia showed that "extremism is the real source of instability in the region," Svilanovic said.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who met with Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, said Russia believed the international community "must clearly qualify what we see in southern Serbia and Macedonia as an aggression of international terrorism".
"We have to set up a firm obstacle to that aggression if we want to avoid a new explosion in the Balkans," Ivanov told reporters after the meeting with Kostunica.
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan on Monday called on all parties concerned to solve discrepancies through consultation and strive to maintain peace, stability and development in Southeast Europe.
In his talks with Croatian Foreign Minister Tonino Picula, Tang noted that the recent spread of the Kosovo crisis into Macedonia has brought new turbulence to the region.
He stressed that the cornerstones of China's policy towards this issue are the UN Charter and other accepted international principles as well as the fundamental interests of the people in the region.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned acts of violence by Albanian extremists in Macedonia and endorsed government efforts to protect the country's multi-ethnic society.
In a statement through his spokesman, Annan said he was "gravely concerned at the escalation of violence and renewed fighting" in Macedonia.
He condemned "acts of violence by Albanian extremists, which constitute a threat to the territorial integrity" of the country and to the stability and security of the Balkans as a whole.
In Washington, the White House said President George W Bush was "concerned about the actions taken by Albanian extremists, and that's why the president and Nato have authorized stepped up patrols".
After a joint meeting in Brussels with Robertson and Macedonian Foreign Minister Srdjan Kerim, EU foreign ministers said in a statement: "The EU will not tolerate any support for insurgents."
And British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook promised London's "full support" for the Macedonian Government, insisting there was "no prospect" of redrawing borders in the Balkans to satisfy separatist demands from ethnic Albanians.
The international support will be welcome in Skopje, which fears the rebels, claiming to fight for equal rights for Macedonia's large Albanian minority, could rip the multi-ethnic former Yugoslav republic apart. (SD-Agencies)
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