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Macedonian Peace Talks Delayed and Relocated
SKOPJE, July 27 (News Agencies) - Peace talks aimed at consolidating a fragile ceasefire in Macedonia between Albanian activists and the army were put off Friday because of government fears the flashpoint northern town of Tetovo was not secure as a venue.
The top-level negotiations, involving Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski and the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian parties, will now take place Saturday in the southwest town of Ohrid, far from the unrest, EU and U.S. envoys Francois Leotard and James Pardew said in a joint statement.
The two foreign diplomats will also be attending the talks, in a sign of the West's desire to shore up the NATO-brokered truce and avert what earlier this week looked like another Balkans war in the making.
The envoys said that instead of the scheduled high-level talks Friday - announced during a lightning visit to Skopje Thursday by NATO Secretary General George Robertson and EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana - experts would meet later in the day in Tetovo.
The experts' preparatory discussions would center on the main sticking point to making a peace accord acceptable: the issue of making Albanian an official language alongside Macedonian, according to the statement.
Macedonian government and presidential officials said the political-level meeting did not take place in Tetovo because "we feel that the venue is not sufficiently secure at the moment".
They said "the guerrillas had not fully withdrawn as agreed" from around the town.
The activists' political leader, Ali Ahmeti, signed an accord with NATO on Wednesday under which all activist checkpoints on the Tetovo road were to be dismantled. All paramilitary forces were also to pull back 500 yards from the last house in all the villages controlled by the fighters since July 5th - the date of the start of the last ceasefire.
The withdrawal, which was to have been completed late Thursday, was a condition of the Macedonian government for it to continue respecting the ceasefire and to refrain from further violence.
Observers said that while there was not full compliance with the agreement, the activists' withdrawal had mostly met the conditions of the ceasefire.
NATO's Skopje spokesman Barry Johnson told AFP on Friday that "it looks like the situation is getting on according to the plan."
There was sporadic shooting heard in Tetovo Friday, but no reports of clashes between activist Albanian and government forces. Elite Macedonian police units were seen patrolling in parts of the town.
Twelve miles north, however, Albanian fighters fired on a police checkpoint close to the town of Jegunovce, the local mayor, Petre Antovski, said. The police riposted and the exchange lasted around half an hour, but there were no reports of casualties.
Skopje itself was calm.
The stubborn unrest between the two sides, along with anti-West, anti-Albanian riots that erupted in Skopje Tuesday by Macedonian Slavs, had raised fears that Macedonia was sliding into all-out civil war, another Balkans conflict that would suck in international peacekeepers.
The new ceasefire agreement and Thursday's visit by senior NATO and EU officials allayed those fears somewhat, although Western diplomats believe the situation is still volatile.
An official at the U.S. embassy in Skopje said that 47 U.S. marines flown in from Italy Thursday were now deployed in boosting the building's security, and confirmed a warning to U.S. citizens in Macedonia to urgently leave the country.
The embassy had been targeted by stone-throwing Slavic mobs Tuesday, along the British and German embassies, and the office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
NATO has steadfastly refused to send in any force, or divert any of its troops from neighboring, Muslim Albanian-dominated Kosovo, to impose a peace in Macedonia, although it has said it is ready to oversee an activist handover of weapons once a peace agreement is in place.
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