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19 Юли 2001 17:45
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Thursday July 19, 7:38 PM
NATO, EU chiefs postpone Macedonia trip as bombs rock capital
SKOPJE, July 19 (AFP) -
NATO chief George Robertson and EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana postponed a trip to Macedonia on Thursday as two bomb blasts rocked Skopje and talks to solve the six-month ethnic Albanian uprising became bogged down in a storm of recriminations targeting Western mediators.
The defence ministry said in a statement Albanian rebels from the National Liberation Army (NLA) were regrouping across the north and west, firing on police near the northwestern town of Tetovo and showing up for the first time near the southwestern border with Albania.
Robertson and Solana put off a joint two-day trip that was to have started on Thursday, deeming the situation there too difficult, Solana's spokeswoman Christina Gallach said.
"Their trip depends on the situation on the ground," she said. "They prefer to wait because the situation is very difficult in Macedonia."
News of the postponement came a day after Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accused the West, which has been sponsoring strained peace talks in Skopje, of supporting ethnic Albanian rebels fighting the government.
He accused EU and US envoys Francois Leotard and James Pardew of creating "a scenario for fracturing Macedonia" between its Slav majority and large ethnic Albanian community.
The Macedonian Slav leaders and press accused the Western envoys of backing demands -- shared by both the Albanian political leaders and the rebels -- to grant Albanian the status of a second official language and giving local police extra jurisdiction.
The Macedonians see in both moves an attempt to split the country into two separate ethnic entities, something they refuse to countenance.
The envoys rejected the charges, while in Washington the State Department said the West repected Macedonia's territorial integrity.
"We are trying to help as much as possible to come out with a political solution," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said, calling the charges "truly untrue".
Meanwhile the leader of the main ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia's coalition government accused Macedonian Slav parties of trying to restart from square one the difficult two-week discussions on boosting 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 rebels and the army already showing signs of unravelling.
"If we have this situation much longer we will have civil war," he said.
Violence seemed to be gaining momentum again as two bomb explosions rocked the capital late on Wednesday and early on Thursday.
Two handmade devices planted under a car injured a Macedonian woman, while a blast in a shopping centre in a mainly Albanian district caused substantial damage but no injuries. No one claimed responsibility for the explosions.
Meanwhile the defence ministry accused the NLA of exploiting the two-week ceasefire, brokered by NATO to give the political talks a chance.
It said the guerrillas were regrouping across the north and west of the country.
Firing targeted police checkpoints from Albanian villages on the edge of Tetovo in the northwest, while uniformed fighters were seen in the predominantly Albanian town itself, the ministry said.
Men in civilian clothes were also spotted by security forces stockpiling crates in mosques in the area, the ministry said, hinting that the rebels were preparing for a renewed escalation if the talks failed to bear fruit soon.
A defence spokesman said on Wednesday a new escalation was possible in "crisis zones" where the guerrillas are active.
NLA guerrillas were also spotted for the first time near Struga, a town close to the southwestern border with Albania, and near water reservoirs just west of the capital Skopje.
Groups of rebels also opened fire on a police checkpoint at a petrol station close to the northern town of Kumanovo, while the army opened fire and repulsed another group of fighter strying to cross near the northern hill village of Tanusevci, where the rebellion broke out in February.
No injuries were reported in the various incidents.
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