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Macedonian Army Tanks Pound Albanian-held Villages
LJUBODRAG, Macedonia, June 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Macedonian tanks pounded ethnic Albanian separatist positions in and around three villages in the north of the country on Saturday.
Smoke rose from the center of Matejce as the government guns targeted points in the disputed village, in its neighbor Otlja and just outside nearby Slupcane. Shells exploded regularly at the rate of around one a minute, but there was no sign of any answering fire from the rebels.
Army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said the firing began after troops came under fire from ethnic Albanian rebels near Matejce, which is partly under separatist control. Macedonian police and troops have fought a series of inconclusive battles around the village 13 miles (20 kilometer) northeast of Skopje every day for the past week.
On each occasion Markovski has described the clashes as the result of separatist "provocations" -- machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire from separatist positions in and around the village and from Otlja.
Macedonian artillery and T-55 tanks are deployed in fields east of the villages, which lie at the base of the Black Mountains of Skopje. The lightly armed guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA) control a group of villages north of Matejce and have launched raids south from their strongholds towards Vistica and Nikustac, police at the frontline said.
While Matejce, Vistica and Nikustac have been largely abandoned by civilians fleeing the fighting, in the separatist stronghold of Lipkovo further north thousands of villagers are trapped and living in worsening conditions.
Red Cross officials, who have described the situation there as "desperate", say that refugees from surrounding villages have flooded into Lipkovo, swelling its population to more than 10,000.
Contacts have been opened with the rebels and local civil authorities, but the International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to organize an evacuation because the guerrillas "could not give security guarantees", ICRC spokeswoman Annick Bouvier said.
On the political front Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski on Wednesday made a grudging promise of constitutional reform to boost the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority, a key separatist demand.
On Sunday ethnic Albanian party leaders, who are part of his unity government but also have links to the rebels, will sit down for more talks with their Macedonian Slav counterparts, officials in the president's office said.
President Boris Trajkovski offered an amnesty to rank-and-file fighters in exchange for their laying down their arms.
Meanwhile more than 10,000 civilians are thought to be holed up in the separatist stronghold of Lipkovo after civilian officials and separatist leaders turned down a government offer to allow the Red Cross to evacuate them to safety, Western news agencies said.
The village, 13 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of Skopje, has a divided ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slav community and lies on the southern edge of a separatist -held pocket of territory on the eastern slopes of the Black Mountains.
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