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Macedonia Launches Major New Offensive
NEAR ARACINOVO, Macedonia, June 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Macedonian army launched a major offensive to push ethnic Albanian activists back from the very edge of the capital Skopje on Friday, blasting their positions in a string of villages in the capital's vicinity.
The sudden dawn offensive, using helicopter gunship strikes and tank and artillery barrage, buried a fragile truce between the army and the activists, as peace talks in the capital faltered and NATO Secretary General George Robertson warned the multi-ethnic Balkans state was "close to civil war".
An activist commander in the suburban town of Aracinovo - which was seized on June 8th by Albanians of the National Liberation Army (NLA) - said three civilians had been killed and 18 wounded in the attack.
Commander Hoxha, of the NLA, threatened to retaliate with a mortar attack on the capital, whose center is less than six miles from Aracinovo.
Another activist leader, Commander Sokoli, said the offensive showed "the Macedonian government wants civil war".
But government spokesman Antonio Milososki said the "anti-terrorist action" was designed to remove the direct activist threat to Skopje and help political leaders negotiate a settlement.
Such a settlement is a prerequisite for NATO to make good its pledge to send in some 3,000 troops to help disarm the NLA.
"The main purpose is to protect Skopje, its citizens and diplomats, as well as NATO troops at the airport," Milososki said.
The airport, which lies about six miles south of Aracinovo, is a logistical hub for NATO peacekeeping operations in neighboring Kosovo, with the highway to Skopje passing just less than a mile in front of Aracinovo.
Macedonian tanks fired down on Aracinovo from overlooking hills and surrounding fields on Friday, while Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter gunships strafed activist positions.
National television showed pictures of a tank, backed by four armored troop carriers, blasting an activist roadblock at the entrance to Aracinovo just after two gunmen had scuttled across the road behind it.
Smoke could be seen rising from several positions on the edge of Aracinovo and several houses were in flames.
The army also launched sweeping attacks on villages held by the NLA since early May and which form a line stretching along the foothills from a point just north of Skopje to the Serbian border.
The dawn attack appeared to be a concerted onslaught by the security forces to cut off the Aracinovo force, as helicopters targeted NLA weapons dumps in two villages just north of the suburb.
Hoxha told AFP by telephone his forces had returned fire on army positions toward the northern city of Kumanovo and in the direction of Skopje.
The Macedonian army had promised to act with restraint during the five-day peace talks which collapsed on Wednesday but had never officially declared a ceasefire, saying it would still act to cut off activist supply lines.
The strains of the drawn-out talks - between the Macedonian Slav and Muslim Albanian parties in the fragile government of national unity - emerged this week when Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski stormed out of a committee overseeing the implementation of the military side of the peace plan.
Boskovski accused fellow parties in the coalition government of being too soft on the activists and said the army should take back occupied territory without waiting for international intervention.
President Boris Trajkovski said on Wednesday the negotiations had foundered on Albanian demands to split the country into two federal units based on ethnicity, which he refused.
The European Union's top foreign affairs representative, Javier Solana, jetted into Skopje on Thursday to urge all the parties to resume talks and agree on reforms to address Albanian complaints of discrimination by the Macedonian Slav majority.
Solana said after talks with Trajkovski and party leaders he was "optimistic" that talks would resume, while Imer Imeri, head of the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity, said a cross-party meeting had taken place late on Thursday.
Government spokesman Milososki said the talks could resume later on Friday.
"There's no reason to stop," he said.
But the army's sudden assault has drawn concern from Muslim Albanian politicians and others that the peace talks will be irreparably damaged by the violence, especially by the resulting casualties which would shatter any sense of trust that had begun to build up.
Zamir Dika, head of the parliamentary group of the Democratic party of Albanians (DPA) - one of two Albanian parties in the fragile emergency coalition - said the army's push "will probably not help the dialogue."
"If we have several civilian casualties I don't know how we can continue the dialogue. The credibility of the Albanian parties will be diminished," he told AFP, adding that support could switch to the NLA.
He dismissed the government's claims that it had acted to remove the threat of an activist attack from Aracinovo.
"For two weeks they have been in Aracinovo and there has been no attack," he said.
Trajkovski has offered Macedonian-born NLA fighters an amnesty if they hand over their guns to a possible NATO force in Macedonia, though the activists have yet to respond to the proposal, which would not extend to their leaders.
The activists want a place in Western-backed talks among Slav and Albanian politicians to improve the lot of the large Albanian minority.
Trajkovski has ruled out any such participation, saying that the government will not negotiate with activists pursuing violence against its troops.
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