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Macedonian Peace Debate Set to Resume Monday
SKOPJE, Sept 2 (News Agencies) - The Macedonian parliament was set to reconvene on Monday, after a concerted push by Western diplomats over the weekend to keep the political peace process on track, the assembly said on Sunday.
The session was suspended Saturday in a surprise move by speaker Stojan Andov, a powerful figure in Macedonian politics, who declared it would not resume until displaced people were allowed to return home and National Liberation Army (NLA) fighters withdrew to positions they held in early July.
After meeting with officials from the European Union, the United States, Europe's OSCE security organization and NATO, Macedonia's moderate president, Boris Trajkovski, assured Andov conditions would improve.
While the diplomats insisted the stalemate was a minor problem, they were quick to point out that no conditions could be applied to the framework peace agreement signed by Macedonia's political leaders on August 13th.
"I told Andov last evening that his actions Saturday disrupted the democratic process and prevented a free and open debate in the parliament on issues important to Macedonian's future," U.S. envoy James Pardew said Sunday.
Andov said that both the U.S. and EU envoys had agreed with his position on displaced Macedonians during their talks.
"We made no agreement on conditions and there are no conditions or linkages in the framework agreement," Pardew said.
The accord, aimed at ending the seven-month Albanian uprising, grants an amnesty to NLA members who disarm, official status to the Albanian language in some areas, more minority jobs in the police force and wider powers to local government.
EU envoy Francois Leotard also said the accord "contains no written conditions and adding a new condition each day is a way to delay peace."
"We cannot have constant threats hanging over the NATO operation and a return to peace," Leotard said after meeting the Macedonian authorities.
"The only condition on this accord is a verbal one, and that concerns the weapons," Leotard said, underlining that NATO had accepted the principle of linking debate on the accord and collecting NLA arms in three phases.
"We are not going to engage in polemics with government. We expected problems, not necessarily of this kind, and they have to solve them and we believe that they will," another diplomatic source said.
"It does not help if the international community comes in when the agreement is between the parties in the government," the source said.
There were also concerns that if the parliamentary impasse was not resolved the NLA could respond by refusing to hand over their weapons to NATO.
NATO has a mission to collect 3,300 NLA arms by September 26th. The alliance is to gather the weapons in three phases and had already netted more than one third of its target during the first phase.
The political process of implementing the peace accord operates in phases parallel to the mission - Operation Essential Harvest.
The parliamentary session, which began on Friday, was scheduled to run through the weekend with deputies voting on whether they would go ahead with plans to modify the constitution by about Tuesday.
NATO's second phase of collection is due to begin once a two-thirds majority in the 120-seat assembly ratifies that process.
Alliance military spokesman Major Barry Johnson said Sunday that no plans had been made to change Task Force Harvest's mandate and that the mission was continuing as planned.
As for refugees, the diplomats were in agreement that implementing the accord would be the best solution for people made homeless by the conflict.
"Of course refugees should return, but progress of the peace agreement including passage of the constitutional changes and the law of self government create the conditions to enable people to return to their homes," Pardew said.
More than 125,000 have been displaced since the uprising began in February, according to the U.N. refugee agency, while a local organization says some 67,000 Macedonians are still waiting to return home.
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