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Language Issue Deadlocks Macedonian Peace Talks
OHRID, Macedonia, July 29 (News Agencies) - Ethnic Muslim Albanian demands that Albanian become an official second language in Macedonia appear to have deadlocked peace talks being held over the weekend in this southern lakeside resort town.
Sources close to the Macedonian Slav parties negotiating with the two ethnic Albanian parties in the ruling coalition said little progress was being made on the issue and the talks, being hosted by President Boris Trajkovski in his summer residence, would likely drag on into Monday and maybe beyond.
"The talks are slow and tough and the major obstacle is the language demand," said one source in Trajkovski's delegation.
An accord is seen as the only way to stave off a civil war that has been threatening the Balkans republic since an armed ethnic Albanian movement against discrimination began in February.
The National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Macedonian security forces are currently observing a ceasefire rescued by NATO this week after pitched fighting around the northern town of Tetovo threatened to widen to engulf the whole country.
The talks opened Saturday with Trajkovski, the party leaders and EU and U.S. envoys Francois Leotard and James Pardew all meeting around the same table.
But in a sign of the differences still to be narrowed, Sunday's talks were conducted with the Slav and the ethnic Albanian parties holding separate discussions with the Western envoys, who shuttled between both sides.
A source in Leotard and Pardew's entourage said the language demand was proving to be "a tricky issue".
The source added: "The talks are difficult, but we are making progress."
The ethnic Albanian party leaders are demanding that Albanian be made an official language alongside Macedonian.
The Slav parties fear conceding to this would create a de facto Albanian state in the northwest of the small republic, along the borders with Kosovo and Albania. Many of the ethnic Albanians who make up around 30 percent of Macedonia's population live in this area.
Leotard and Pardew presented a proposition that would limit Albanian to areas that had a population of at least 20 percent ethnic Albanians, but the ethnic Albanian parties are said to have rejected it.
Zahir Bekteshi, the spokesman of one of the parties, the PDP, confirmed this, saying "nothing is settled."
He added that the talks would probably go on into Monday, especially as the negotiators have not even started real discussions on the other outstanding demand: that an independent ethnic Albanian police force be created in certain areas.
While the talks went on, there was relative calm in and around Tetovo, although the area remained tense.
"The number of armed incidents has diminished, as is the regrouping of the terrorists," army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said, referring to the rebels.
Four rocket-propelled grenades were, however, fired at army barracks in the town early Sunday, but caused neither casualties nor significant damage, Markovski said.
An Albanian commander known as Hoxha, who is based just north of the capital Skopje, told AFP late Saturday: "We are respecting the ceasefire, but we are not relaxing our guard. We're preparing for the worst if there's no political agreement."
He said that if an accord was reached, "we are ready to drop our arms immediately, but if they (the Macedonian authorities) want a war, they'll get it."
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