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Macedonian Soldiers Killed By Landmine
SKOPJE, Aug 10 (News Agencies) - Macedonia's fragile peace process was in crisis on Friday after a landmine killed seven Macedonian soldiers and Albanian activists went on the offensive in the country's main Muslim Albanian-populated city.
The international community condemned the upsurge in the violence and urged the Balkan country to forge ahead and sign a peace deal.
Military sources told AFP seven soldiers were killed and eight others were injured on Friday when an army truck ran over a mine on the road to Ljubanci village. Hospital sources said the toll could be higher.
The new deaths came after intensive fighting took place overnight in the troubled former Yugoslav country, with renewed clashes between activists of the National Liberation Army (NLA) and government forces, threatening to scupper the signing of an internationally-mediated peace agreement scheduled for Monday.
The NLA pounded army and police checkpoints around Tetovo, as they sought to make headway in the country's main Muslim Albanian populated city, while Macedonian forces returned fire near the villages of Tearce and Neprosteno.
An AFP correspondent in the town reported a lull in the fighting during the day. The streets of the town were largely empty after Macedonian helicopters and Sukhoi fighter jets had earlier circled over the Tetovo skies.
The NLA control some of the suburbs around Tetovo and are trying to push into parts of the city.
Washington's envoy to Macedonia, James Pardew, called for a return to the July 5th ceasefire and condemned the violence as "extremely damaging to the peace process".
"We are very hopeful that the political agreement which is critical to the deployment of NATO forces can be signed on Monday in Skopje," he said in Sofia.
But the EU's chief envoy, Francois Leotard, was more cautious, saying that while he believed the accord would be signed, "we have often been disappointed."
"I believe the signing will go ahead ... I cannot for a moment imagine that there will be a return to violence instead of a peace deal," Leotard told French Radio International (RFI) on Friday.
Meanwhile, Macedonians in the southern town of Prilep buried 10 soldiers killed in an ambush of an army convoy on Wednesday, in the worst single attack by Albanian activists since they launched an uprising six months ago.
Around 400 people attended the funeral while thousands gathered in the town center to mourn the dead.
A little-known group, the Albanian National Army (ANA), separately issued a statement from Kosovo, saying it opposed the peace deal and claiming responsibility for the ambush that killed the 10 soldiers.
"The accord which makes Albanians remain under the authority of Macedonian Slavs should not be signed," the statement said.
NATO's envoy to Macedonia warned against seeking a military solution to the crisis and urged a return to the ceasefire.
"We urge both parties to stick to their commitment of July 5th and to respect the ceasefire with immediate effect. The political dialogue must not be endangered now that a settlement is so near," said Major Barry Johnson.
The activists say they are fighting for the rights of Macedonia's Muslim Albanian minority, who make up about one-third of the country's population.
Macedonian and Albanian political leaders on Wednesday initialed an agreement to end the conflict after nearly two weeks of negotiations in the southern lakeside resort of Ohrid. Western envoys said the deal should be formally signed on Monday.
The peace agreement, worked out under intense pressure from U.S. and European mediators, calls for use of Albanian as an official language, police reforms in Albanian areas and the deployment of 3,500 NATO troops to disarm NLA activists.
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