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Macedonia pushes for coalition
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MACEDONIA backed down yesterday on its high-risk strategy of declaring war on ethnic Albanian guerrillas and put the finishing touches to a national unity government involving all political parties.
But after a quiet morning, witnesses contacted by telephone near the rebel-held village of Vaksince near the northern city of Kumanovo said that shelling had resumed, with guerrillas firing back with machineguns.
The political breakthrough came after a day of high-level talks between Macedonian leaders and Nato chief George Robertson and the European Union's top foreign policy representative, Javier Solana.
The European Union had feared that declaring a state of war could raise tensions to breaking point in the ethnically-mixed Balkans state, while international rights groups warned it could trample on civil liberties.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, who upped the stakes on Saturday by announcing the possibility of a state of war being proclaimed, said after marathon talks on Monday that he was close to forming a national unity government.
He declared himself “convinced that an agreement will be reached", hopefully after talks resume later yesterday.
Nato chief Robertson said on Monday that the former Yugoslav republic was “on the brink of real trouble" and urged all parties to pull back and seek a political way out of the crisis.(SD-Agencies)
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