Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- Macedonia Rebels Attack Police By MISHA SAVIC .c The Associated Press [The title is the first deception. The "rebel" NLA is not comprised of "local" Albanians, but instead is mainly based and draws on fighters from US occupied Kosovo and northern Albania] OHRID, Macedonia (AP) - Ethnic Albanian rebels lobbed mortars at Macedonian police positions near the country's second largest city Saturday, straining a shaky truce that has coincided with peace talks, state radio reported. News of the cease-fire violations came as a key European envoy announced plans to travel to Macedonia to bolster Western peace efforts for the troubled Balkan nation. EU security chief Javier Solana will fly from Ukraine to Macedonia on Sunday to attend the talks at the lake resort of Ohrid, said his spokesman, Christina Gallach. [Most Western military leaders have been making more frequent trips to Ukraine to urge that government to halt its arms shipments to Macedonia, while US weapons are continuing to flow to the NLA] ``He wants to support the negotiations at this particular moment,'' she said. ``We hope for final progress as soon as possible.'' The rebels launched several gun and mortar attacks against Macedonian police positions near the northwestern, mostly ethnic Albanian-populated city of Tetovo, Macedonia's state-run radio said Saturday. There were no reports of casualties. The often-violated truce was signed last month in order to make it possible for talks to start between majority Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians. The talks on a complex, Western-designed peace plan are focusing now on increasing the number of ethnic Albanians in the country's police force. Western mediators discussed deploying dozens of foreign police experts and officers to help carry out reforms if the rival sides agree on a peace plan, officials said while speaking on condition of anonymity. The officers and experts would come on top of the estimated 3,000 NATO troops that the proposed peace plan envisages to help disarm the ethnic Albanian rebels. Ethnic Albanians are demanding that their sizable community - nearly a third of Macedonia's 2 million people - be proportionately represented in police forces, especially in areas where they are the majority. They also want to independently elect police chiefs who would answer to local leaders [who would in turn be controled by NATO] rather than the central government in the capital, Skopje. The ethnic Albanians also demand that the rebels become members of the police force once a peace deal is reached. Macedonians see these demands as part of an ethnic Albanian strategy to ultimately carve off and break away northwestern regions where the restive minority lives and where the rebels already control chunks of territory. [Actually the Macedonian press has been unanimous that this is not an "Albanian strategy" but a US ploy to permanently partition and occupy the country] Several Macedonian-populated villages in the area have been cut off for days by the rebels. Authorities dispatched a humanitarian convoy Saturday with 40 tons of food and medicine. But a few hundred local ethnic Albanian civilians stopped the convoy around noon and refused to let the aid reach 2,400 Macedonians, said a relief worker with the convoy, Saso Klekovski. The convoy returned to the capital, Skopje. The insurgency, which began in February, has left dozens dead and thousands displaced. The rebels say they are fighting for more rights. Talks to end the crisis have dragged on for about a month. Ukraine's Foreign Minister, Anatoliy Zlenko, is also scheduled to attend Sunday's session, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski's office said. The visit could not be independently confirmed. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, traveled to Ukraine last month to win assurances that Ukraine - Macedonia's key arms supplier - would stop the sales. Ukraine has promised to ``consider'' stopping weapons supplies but pledged to continue military-technical cooperation with Macedonia, according to a Foreign Ministry statement last week. AP-NY-08-04-01 1312EDT ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
