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UNHCR Says Macedonian Refugees Begin Returning Home
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 8 (News Agencies) - Nearly 5,000 Muslim Albanian refugees have left the neighboring Serbian province of Kosovo to return home to Macedonia, a U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman said Saturday.
"Some 2,050 people crossed the border on Friday, and today [Saturday] at 2:00 pm [1200 GMT], more than 2,000 had already gone back," Astrid van Genderen Stort told AFP.
"People have a positive feeling because of the latest political developments and many think it is time to go home, even if for many it is unknown if they will be able to stay in their houses," she added.
The Macedonian parliament on Thursday approved a peace deal that hinges on NATO collection of weapons from the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) who have staged a seven-month uprising in the country.
If NATO's Operation Essential Harvest is successful, parliament will examine amendments to the constitution that would boost the rights of the fragile Balkan state's Muslim Albanian minority.
More than 42,000 Muslim Albanians fled Macedonia during the insurgency which began in February, and found refuge in Kosovo.
More than 30,000 refugees remain there, mostly in the southeastern region of Gnjilane.
The refugees' return was made possible after the lifting of a barricade set up two weeks ago by Macedonian protestors on the main road linking Kosovo to the Macedonian capital of Skopje.
The displaced Macedonians who set up the roadblock had said they would stay on until they were allowed to return to their homes and groups of missing Macedonians had been released.
The UNHCR spokeswoman reiterated their views. "They just want to go home," she said.
Meanwhile, NATO is to continue collecting arms from the NLA in Macedonia on Sunday, a spokesman said, while declining to specify how many weapons it had so far gathered in the second phase of its operation.
Speaking after a collection Friday netted NLA arms, including a tank and an armored personnel carrier, the spokesman expressed confidence Saturday that the British-led operation would achieve its target by late next week.
"We got the number of weapons we hoped to get yesterday, so we're on track," said spokesman Mark Laity.
After a key parliamentary vote, NATO started at the end of the week the second phase of Operation Essential Harvest, which aims to collect a total 3,300 weapons from NLA.
The British-led operation collected some 1,200 arms in its first phase, which began on August 27th, and is supposed to collect another third - about 1,100 - by next Thursday, September 13th, when lawmakers resume debating.
The spokesman declined to say how many arms the NLA had voluntarily handed over on Friday at a NATO collection point in the NLA-held village of Radusa, northwest of the capital Skopje.
"One of the reasons we want to be a little more cautious on releasing the figures is that, because we tried to put out figures too quickly last time, we made a number of errors," said Laity.
In the first phase, NATO initially said it had collected about 1,400, but ended up revising the figure downward to just above 1,200.
An NLA commander said some 160 arms were turned over in Radusa, in a ceremony observed by journalists. A NATO spokesman declined to confirm that figure, but said more arms and ammunition had been handed in after that ceremony.
The location of the second collection site Sunday, operated by French and German NATO troops, will not be disclosed until it is operational.
If the second collection phase is successful, parliament will begin examining amendments to the constitution necessary to boost minority rights, such as officially recognizing the Albanian language.
The Macedonian peace plan gives NATO a strict 30-day mandate to collect NLA weapons, ending on September 26th.
NATO meanwhile reiterated its belief that the target of 3,300 arms represents most of the NLA's weapons. Macedonian authorities have criticized the target, saying the NLA may only be handing in a fraction of their arms.
"We believe that the number of weapons that we expect to be voluntarily handed over by the so-called NLA is, broadly, close to our estimates of their arsenal," said Laity.
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