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Guns Silent On Macedonia's Northern Border
SKOPJE, April 1 (News Agencies) - Macedonians took advantage Sunday of what they feared might only be a temporary lull in hostilities, after fighting between ethnic Albanian rebels and security forces came to a halt.
"During the night and this morning it was totally calm, without any sporadic fighting. We control all the territory," army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said, one week after police and troops launched an assault on rebel positions near the Kosovo frontier.
Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski announced Saturday that ethnic Albanian fighters of the National Liberation Army (NLA) had been defeated and government control restored in villages along the border.
In the capital Skopje, most citizens took the prime minister at his word, and young revelers packed out the city's bars right through to the early hours after three tense weeks when the country seemed on the edge of civil war.
But despite the mood of relief, at least one rebel commander warned he was ready to fight on.
The chief, who gave his name as Ali Daja or "the Uncle", told AFP by telephone that his men were still in place in the mountains and ready for action.
"Nothing has changed. On the military front, we are in position. On the political front, there has been no progress," he said, saying he was speaking from the Lipkovo region immediately northeast of the capital.
The moderate leader of Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian party, Arben Xhaferi, warned that the rebels would act if a political settlement guaranteeing Albanians constitutional status could not be found quickly.
"They have not gone. They are here, in civilian clothes. They will see the outcome of our negotiations and if they are not happy they will continue again," the leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) told AFP.
The European Union's two most senior foreign policy officials, Javier Solana and Chris Patten, were expected to arrive in Skopje on Monday to discuss ways out of the crisis.
Markovski said troops were still active in the Sar mountains north of Macedonia's second city, Tetovo, which is mainly populated by ethnic Albanians and was the scene of fierce clashes last Sunday when government troops stormed rebel held villages.
But fighting there was over, he insisted.
"We are moving towards the end of the border area in the Sar mountains, clearing land mines, but it is snowing up there so it is a slow process," he said.
A press officer for the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, which maintains logistics bases in Macedonia and 44,000 troops inside Kosovo, said there had been no reports of overnight fighting.
The stated objectives of the both the guerrillas and moderate ethnic Albanians such as Xhaferi's DPA is to persuade Skopje to change its constitution to give Albanians equal status with their Macedonian neighbors.
This would mean equal status for the Albanian language for official use, he said, a decentralization of power towards municipal authorities and proportional employment of Albanians in state posts, Xhaferi said.
But the government has insisted that the rebels, who arrived suddenly on the scene at the start of last month and raised the Albanian banner over a string of northern villages, are led by "troublemakers" from Kosovo seeking to destabilize the region and create a "Greater Albania".
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