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Albanian Separatists Dealt Blow In Macedonia
TETOVO, Macedonia, March 17 (News Agencies) - Macedonian security forces on Saturday started to gain the upper hand in their battle with scores of Albanian separatists firing down on the town of Tetovo, capturing some of the insurgents and driving out more, officials said.
The breakthrough came after four days of intense fighting that has caused at least 2,000 people to flee the big northwestern town and sparked fears that Macedonia could sink into a bitter war pitting the Slav majority against the large Albanian minority.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski was considering widening his coalition to bring in more Albanians in a bid to calm the conflict.
Special police armed with mortars and machineguns launched a counter-offensive Friday, succeeding in "destroying an arms dump and a position of the Kosovo Albanian terroists," said interior ministry spokesman Stevo Pendarovski.
"A large number of terrorists fled higher up the mountain" he said.
He said some separatists of the National Liberation Army (UCK) had been taken prisoner but refused to say how many.
He also voiced Skopje's concern at the "evacuation" of women and children from two villages near Tetovo, seeking shelter as far away as Slovenia and Austria.
"We cannot stop the population from seeking shelter, but we invite them to stay put since they have no reason to flee," he said.
He also denied rumors that ethnic Albanian troops had started deserting the Macedonian army.
The flight from Tetovo was also joined by some 500 German troops who were evacuated from the town after the Macedonian barracks they were housed in came under attack from the separatists Friday.
German tanks and armored vehicles were sent as additional safeguards for the troops from bases in Kosovo, where Germany heads up the southern sector of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission.
In Istanbul, Macedonian Foreign Minister Srdjan Kerim called for NATO to step up its protection of the border to stop more Albanian gunmen crossing to aid their Macedonian brethren, who accuse Skopje of treating them as second-class citizens.
NATO has said it has closed the border to the gunmen, but in reality the mountainous and wooded frontier is impossible to seal fully.
Skopje says some 500 guerrillas, mostly from Kosovo, are attacking them, with 200 on the front line at Tetovo, in a bid to destroy the country and incorporate the Albanian-dominated northwest into Kosovo.
And in an alarming sign that the conflict could engulf the whole of the north, a police station on the edge of Kumanovo, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of the capital Skopje, was raked overnight with automatic rifle fire, a police official said.
Police fired back and a brief gun battle ensued.
The attack came just a day after an UCK commander threatened to bring the fight to the whole country, and specifically mentioned Kumanovo.
Many Macedonians have started panic buying of food and fuel in anticipation of a drawn-out emergency.
Government spokesman Antonio Milososki said Skopje was ready to ask for foreign military aid if necessary, but said the time had not yet arrived.
"For the moment, there is no need for help, but if the need arises, the government will ask for direct military aid," he said.
Former interior minister Ljubomir Frckovski warned that if the international community became involved they would impose conditions on Skopje, which has refused to talk with a group it calls terrorist, even if it is open to reforms to improve the lot of the Albanian minority.
He said anything was better than the "humiliating loss of our state at the negotiating table" and warned that if no serious response was taken Macedonian Slavs could start forming paramilitary groups to take direct action.
"People are already talking of the emergence of a war psychosis," he said.
In Skopje, Georgievski said he was thinking about broadening his center-right coalition formed in 1998, to bring in opposition parties including the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) of Imer Imeri.
The parliament was meeting for a second day to consider its response to the emergency.
It has already given the green light for the army to lend its firepower to the overstretched police.
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