By Damir Ahmad, IOL Correspondent

MOSCOW, June 1 (IslamOnline.net) – Macedonia’s Muslims strongly reject the building of a new U.S. embassy on the Islamic cemetery in the Gradista neighborhood of the capital Skopje.

Voicing opposition to the U.S. move, the Macedonian Islamic Organization (MIO) said the area houses a mass Islamic tomb of 2000 people, who were properly laid to rest 300 years ago, Russia’s N.T.V. network reported Monday, May 31.

In a statement, it warned of violent demonstration if the Macedonian authorities and Washington do not backtracked on the decision.

The body stressed that there are several places in Skopje where the new headquarters of the U.S. embassy can be constructed.

Muslim leaders in the southeastern European country are lobbying the government to withhold a permit to build the embassy on the soil of the Islamic tomb.

They further seek to register the area as a historic site.

The United States has bought a piece of land in safe Gradista to build a new embassy instead of the one standing now in Ilinden, Skopje.

Muslims, mainly Albanians and Turks, represent 30 percent of the country’s some two million population.

The Orthodox Christians represent some 67 percent, according to the C.I.A. World Factbook.

On 8 September, 1991, a public referendum was held and the country gained its independent from Yugoslavia.

On August 13, 2001, majority Macedonian and minority Albanian political parties signed a peace accord, averting a civil war after a six-month Albanian uprising in the north that split the country along ethnic lines.