Macedonian Rebels Back Down

Ethnic Albanian rebels declared a cease-fire and issued a fresh call for peace talks Wednesday, just hours before the expiration of a government ultimatum demanding they lay down their arms.

The midnight deadline passed with no immediate sign of the Macedonian government's threatened all-out assault, but President Boris Trajkovski issued a brief statement minutes earlier declaring that "it is necessary to neutralize and eliminate the extremists."

"It is necessary that the Macedonian army take control of the Macedonian side of the border," he said.

In the ultimatum it laid down Tuesday night, the army had given the rebels 24 hours to surrender completely or leave the country, or face an all-out counteroffensive. Up to now, the Macedonian government has steadfastly refused to agree to peace talks, saying it has no intention of negotiating with insurgents it regards as terrorists.

Trajkovski said the government was willing to reach a peaceful settlement, but only through Parliament and other established institutions, ruling out direct talks with the insurgents.

Before the rebels' offer, government spokesman Antonio Milososki delivered a stern warning that the government had "nothing more to say to the terrorists" and it was sticking to its midnight (6 p.m. ET) deadline.

The rebel concession was offered by Ali Ahmeti, the political head of the National Liberation Army, in a taped television broadcast from neighboring Kosovo.

Reuters

Homes burned outside Tetovo.

He said the cease-fire was open-ended, but warned that in case of attack the more than four-week struggle would continue.

"In case our positions are threatened by our opponents, then all our forces will be on the move and the conflict would widen," he said. "We have repeated constantly and will repeat again that we are for dialogue. We are not for a war that would create rivers of blood between two nations, because the reason for dialogue would be lost in that case."

The rebels say they are a homegrown movement fighting for greater rights in Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians are outnumbered by Slavs three to one, but the government claims they are linked to fighters across the border in Kosovo and aim to break off northern Macedonia to form an independent ethnic Albanian state.

Earlier Wednesday, a rebel commander who gave his name ony as Sokoli told local media in Kosovo that the insurgents had no intention of surrendering.

Later, Macedonian army sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the military had spotted a "huge group" of Albanian insurgents on the Kosovo border apparently preparing to cross into Macedonia.

Several hours before Macedonia's ultimatum was issued, army cannon targeting rebels on hillsides just north of Tetovo fell silent and the calm near Macedonia's second-largest city held into Wednesday afternoon.

But in a sign that the conflict could spill over to the Macedonian capital, a police officer was shot and killed when a group of policemen were attacked in the Albanian quarter of Skopje.

And above the hills of Tetovo, the rebels showed no sign of bending. Fighters toting submachine guns took up positions in the hills heading down toward the city. Felled trees blocked the road leading from there to Shipkovica, one of the rebel strongholds.

Before news of the cease-fire offer, some villagers, mostly women and children, set out on foot toward Tetovo, anticipating trouble once the deadline ends at midnight. Others boarded up windows with metal sheeting and wood, determined to stay.

"We have decided to die in these houses if that is what is to be," said Nejo, a villager who refused to give his last name. "We are not for blood. We are not for weapons. We are just for a dialogue to reach a solution."

Shipkovica residents, hearing of the proffered cease-fire through battery-powered radios, expressed doubt this would be the end of fighting.

"We don't trust the Slavs," said Dr. Kadri Kadria. "This isn't something that is going to be resolved quickly."

As night fell, those who could sought out basements for shelter. More than 60 people crowded into a small cellar, sitting on rugs and carpets

"I really hope my baby is not born into a war."

Although Tetovo remained quiet, rebels active in the volatile southern Serbian buffer zone with Kosovo unleashed mortar attacks o Serb police Wednesday, the Serbian government said in a statement. It said there were nearly a dozen other scattered attacks in that area over the past 24 hours.

The U.S., meanwhile, says it is not considering sending peacekeeping troops to Macedonia, officials said.

"Our intentions are to continue to operate in a NATO context on the Kosovo side of the border to try to limit, as much as we can, the movement of people and equipment and weapons back and forth across that border" with Macedonia, said Rear. Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman.

However, the Washington Post, quoting unidentified Macedonian officials, reported in its Wednesday editions that U.S. forces in Kosovo are providing aerial photos and other military intelligence to Macedonia army officers. Those officers are preparing an offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

The newspaper quoted Quigley as saying he was "not aware of any unilateral U.S.-to-Macedonia exchanges." However, U.S. officials working with NATO might have provided the information outside of the U.S. chain of command, he said.

President Bush assured Tuesday that: "We're going to work with our allies to bring peace to that region."

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov Wednesday blamed the West's tolerance of ethnic Albanian rebels with helping fuel the conflict in Macedonia.

"Passive reaction by the West to the spread of the Kosovo conflict to the Albanian-populated regions (of Macedonia) … only helps the separatists (to) go unpunished and be more radical in their actions," Ivanov told reporters in Skopje.

He said that neither air bombardment nor a massive military presence — which NATO used in the Kosovo crisis to protect the majority ethnic Albanian community there from Yugoslav forces — could solve the region's problems.

The U.N. Security Council was debating a new resolution that would condemn extremist violence in Macedonia and southern Serbia, in the buffer zone.

Although ethnic relations with the majority Slavs have been relatively trouble-free, substantial numbers of the ethnic Albanian minority feel they are being treated as second-class citizens.

Thousands of ethnic Albanians gathered in the Kosovo capital Pristina on Wednesday night in support of their kin in neighboring Macedonia and a peaceful solution to the crisis there.

Members of the crowd also chanted "UCK," the initials for both the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group fighting in Macedonia and the Kosovo Liberation Army on which it is modeled and which fought Serb rule in the province in the 1990s.

The demonstrators in the city center, estimated by police to number at least 4,000, carried banners with slogans such as "Stop Macedonian terror against Albanians."

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