|
Macedonia Inks Pact With EU
LUXEMBOURG, April 9 (News Agencies) - Macedonia pledged Monday to make rapid progress in addressing the grievances of its restive ethnic Albanian minority, as it signed a landmark pact marking a first step on the long road to full European Union membership.
The Stabilization and Association Agreement - which comes hard on the heels of a short-lived ethnic Albanian rebellion on the Kosovo-Macedonia border that nearly sparked a new civil war in the Balkans - binds the former Yugoslav republic to EU standards on democracy and economic reform.
Taking the process further, Macedonia affirmed it was setting up an all-party "Europe Committee" chaired by President Boris Trajkovski with a mandate to achieve "first substantive results" by June towards addressing ethnic Albanian concerns.
"The future now is up to you... Good luck and welcome to our extended family," Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh told Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, as they toasted the agreement with Macedonian wine during an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg.
Sweden holds the agenda-setting EU presidency through June, after which Belgium takes the helm.
Monday's signing ceremony preceded this week's meeting in Paris of the six-nation Contact Group on the former Yugoslavia, the first to be attended by the new U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell.
The Contact Group, which also includes Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Russia, was set to discuss the recent violence in Macedonia, forthcoming elections in Kosovo, and the fate of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic following his April 1st arrest in Belgrade on corruption charges.
Georgievski described Monday's pact - the first of its kind that the EU has signed with a western Balkan state - as an "award for everything we've done" since Macedonia's bloodless succession from Yugoslavia a decade ago.
"I believe that the whole of Macedonia is standing behind this statement," he said through an interpreter.
Arben Xhaferi, leader of Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian political party, which is part of Georgievski's government, welcomed the June target for progress.
"Deadlines always create a mechanism for political ideas," Xhaferi told reporters after the signing ceremony, which he attended along with several other Macedonian political figures.
But he said ethnic Albanians - who represent one-quarter or more of Macedonia's Slav-dominated population of two million - want to see constitutional reforms, a bigger share of government jobs, and an amnesty for rebels involved in last month's fighting.
The 13-page EU-Macedonia agreement obliges the 15 EU member states to open their markets to Macedonian products. In return, Skopje is to "harmonize" its laws with those in the EU, and to cooperate in fighting cross-border crime.
EU officials described the accord as a first step towards full EU membership - although EU heads of state and government would first have to give their approval before Macedonia can join the 12 other eastern European and Mediterranean states in accession negotiations with Brussels.
Talks towards a similar Stabilization and Association agreement started last year with Croatia.
Negotiations with Macedonia were already underway when, in February, the National Liberation Army (NLA) clashed with security forces, in a conflict that saw the EU and NATO throw their full support behind Skopje.
Though Skopje last week claimed victory over the NLA, fears of renewed hostilities still run high in Macedonia.
On Sunday, the vice president of Xhaferi's Democratic Party of Albanians said fighting could flare up again if no changes are made to the existing, "ethnocentric" constitution.
Notably absent from Monday's signing ceremony was an opposition ethnic Albanian group, the Democratic Prosperity Party (DPP). Macedonian Foreign Minister Srdjan Kerim said it had opted for "self-isolation."
|
