|
At Least 20 Rebels Killed In Macedonia
WASHINGTON, May 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - At least 20 Muslim Albanian fighters have been killed in the latest fighting near the villages of Vaksine and Slupane on Saturday, said Macedonian military officials.
As politicians forged a new "unity" government, government forces resumed shelling Muslim Albanian rebels in several northern towns.
CNN reports that Macedonian troops returned rebel gunfire with volleys of tank fire near the town of Mateice, and described the exchanges as "low level".
"Today we have a massive operation. It began at 10:00 a.m. (0810 GMT) when we hit targets in Slupance. At 10:20 we hit a column of uniformed terrorists to the north of Slupcane," said army spokesman Blagoja Markovski in a news conference Saturday.
"We were most active at about 2:30 p.m. when we hit a column to the northwest of Vakcince. We used artillery and tanks in the morning and helicopters in the afternoon."
In an effort to form a unity government and end the fighting with the rebels, Skopje has been negotiating with Muslim Albanian political groups.
According to a source close to the government, ethnic Albanians will be given the cabinet positions of labor, local self-government, economics and justice.
Ethnic Albanians rebels, who have been battling government forces for several months, have been in a standoff with Macedonian troops for the past ten days.
Government forces have been trying to move talks with Muslim Albanian political groups forward while at the same time trying to flush out armed rebels from a dozen villages in the country's north.
The International Committee for the Red Cross entered the rebel-held villages on Friday, during a dawn to dusk ceasefire, and evacuated around 69 people, including pregnant and ill persons, but thousands of people remained.
Srdjan Kerim, Macedonian Foreign Minister, quit earlier Saturday after a key ethnic Albanian party agreed to participate in the "grand coalition" government.
Ljubco Georgieveski, Prime Minister, has accepted the resignation ahead of a parliament session scheduled for Sunday when the new coalition government will be approved and his party, the VMRO will keep the interior position.
Kerim is believed to have accepted a role in the country's mission to the U.N. in New York.
According to CNN, the democratic party SDSM will fill the ministry posts of defense, foreign affairs, health and environment.
At this point it is yet unknown which posts the ethnic Albanian PDP party will take.
However, all "the parties reiterated their common interest that the security situation in the country should be their basic task," said Georgievski.
It is expected that the broad-based government will have the two-thirds majority necessary to approve constitutional reforms demanded by the Muslim Albanian minority, which makes up about a third of the country's two million people.
Macedonia's government refuses to negotiate with the rebels, describing them as "terrorists" bent on carving up the country and creating a larger Balkan conflict.
|
