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Albanian Parties Walk Out Of Macedonia Peace Talks
SKOPJE, July 19 (News Agencies) - Talks aimed at ending a six-month ethnic Albanian uprising in Macedonia appeared to be doomed Thursday after Albanian political leaders said they would no longer take part.
The Albanians walked out of negotiations, saying their work at the negotiating table was finished, national television reported.
The two leaders of the ethnic Albanian parties, who are also members of Macedonia's governing coalition, failed to turn up at a meeting Thursday organized by President Boris Trajkovski, western sources said.
They made their comments in an interview to local media, according to television.
Muslim Albanians and Macedonian Slav politicians had been seeking a political settlement to end an Albanian uprising that has threatened to plunge Macedonia into all-out war.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana scrapped a planned visit to Skopje and criticized Macedonia's prime minister for slamming EU and U.S. efforts to restore peace.
The parties had been in talks on a U.S.-EU plan to revamp Macedonia's political structures, but negotiations stumbled over Albanian demands that the Albanian language be made an official language alongside Macedonian.
U.S. envoy James Pardew and EU emissary Francois Leotard attended the meeting, a source told AFP.
Earlier, the leader of the main Albanian party in Macedonia's coalition government accused Macedonian Slav parties of going back to square one in the difficult two-week discussions on enhancing Albanian rights.
"The Macedonians want to go back to the positions held at the start," said Arben Xhaferi, the president of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA).
Zamir Dika, head of the parliamentary group of DPA deputies, warned there was no time to start over again with the slow-moving dialogue, with the strained ceasefire between the activists and the army already showing signs of unraveling.
"If we have this situation much longer, we will have civil war," he said.
In Brussels, Robertson and Solana took Ljubco Georgievski to task in a sharply-worded statement issued after explosions in Skopje caused them to postpone a planned trip there Thursday on a two-day mission to help keep peace efforts on track.
"Mr. Georgievski's statement yesterday in reaction to the proposals of EU and U.S. envoys in Skopje was an undignified response to international efforts to assist in the search for a peaceful solution," the statement read.
"It is also disappointing, given that the international facilitators are in Skopje at the invitation of the government, which has been informed of every move made."
Georgievski on Wednesday accused the EU and U.S. of supporting Muslims Albanian activists.
He accused envoys Leotard and Pardew of creating "a scenario for fracturing Macedonia" between its Slav majority and large Muslim Albanian community.
Solana's spokeswoman said Thursday that Robertson and Solana - who have been at the forefront of international efforts to contain the Macedonian Albanian uprising since it flared up in February - were only putting off their trip, not canceling plans altogether.
But from their candidly worded statement, it appeared that Georgievski's remarks had weighed heavily on their decision.
"The international community has given no support or comfort to the ethnic Albanian armed groups," they said.
Macedonian Slav leaders and press have accused the Western envoys of backing demands - shared by both the Albanian political leaders and the activists - to grant Albanian the status of a second official language and giving local police extra jurisdiction.
The Macedonians reject the moves as attempts to split the country into two separate ethnic entities.
Violence seemed to be gaining momentum again as two bomb explosions rocked the capital late Wednesday and early Thursday.
And the defense ministry reported Thursday that Albanian activists are beginning to regroup across the north and west of Macedonia.
Shooting erupted in several northern areas as members of the National Liberation Army (NLA) were spotted mustering as far afield as Struga, near the southwestern border with Albanian, and Tanusevci, a former stronghold on the northern border with Kosovo, a ministry statement said.
The NLA opened rifle fire on police positions in villages around the northwestern town of Tetovo late Wednesday and early Thursday, and uniformed fighters were spotted in the town itself, the ministry said. No injuries were reported.
The widespread regrouping came after blasts in Skopje left one woman injured, while the governmental coordinating committee overseeing military aspects of a fragile ceasefire confirmed that three Macedonian men had been abducted Wednesday by a group of 11 NLA fighters near Tetovo.
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