Macedonia Blast Kills 2; Rebels Free American, 7 Others

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas Sunday evening released a U.S. man and seven ethnic Macedonians they had held captive.

The release came barely 12 hours after a popular restaurant frequented by ethnic Macedonians was blown up. An ethnic Macedonian guard and a bartender were killed in the blast.

Several Western sources said they suspected that the explosion was the work of the guerrillas, who call themselves the National Liberation Army, but an NLA spokesman denied responsibility.

Macedonia has been on the verge of civil war since February, when ethnic Albanian rebels took up arms, they said, to fight for more rights for the country’s sizable ethnic Albanian minority. At least 25% of Macedonia’s 2 million people are ethnic Albanian.

In recent weeks, European and U.S. mediators have worked with the country’s political parties--two ethnic Macedonian and two ethnic Albanian--to craft a peace plan. In an operation that will proceed parallel to the enactment of the plan by parliament, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has agreed to enter the nation to disarm the rebels. However, that process has steadily become more controversial.

Both the release of the hostages and the restaurant explosion came on the eve of NATO’s first scheduled collection of weapons from the NLA.

The American hostage, Vojislav Mihajlovic, who also holds Macedonian citizenship, was captured seven or eight weeks ago near the village of Radusa near the border with Kosovo, a majority ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. Late Sunday evening, he was receiving medical care in Skopje, the Macedonian capital.

Mihajlovic, who was seized along with two ethnic Macedonians, is between 45 and 50, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“He looks as if he is in reasonable health given his ordeal,” said Red Cross official Amanda Williamson.

U.S. Embassy officials said they had been working on his release for some time but had not wanted to publicize their efforts.

“We are pleased that this U.S. citizen was released,” said Peter Becskehazy, an embassy spokesman.

The number of ethnic Macedonians who are thought to be held hostage by the NLA varies, but until the eight were released Sunday, there were at least 25, according to Macedonian and international humanitarian aid groups.

Although the release of the hostages was welcomed, it occurred as ethnic Macedonians were seething over the destruction of the restaurant in the town of Celopek, the ancestral home of Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski.

According to a police investigator at the scene who asked that his name not be used, it appeared that the two men who were killed were tied to a concrete column in the middle of the building and that powerful explosives were placed next to them or perhaps strapped to them. After several hours of sifting, only a portion of their remains had been located, he said.

Although the neighborhood had been tense before this weekend, there had been few signs of guerrilla activity there, according to one of the restaurant’s owners, Ljube Aleksovski, 42. But signs of trouble appeared Saturday night, he said.

The bartender, Svetoslav Trpcevski, 39, who lived with his widowed mother, called home about midnight.

“He told her he saw three or four unfamiliar cars around and people who he thought were NLA outside,” Aleksovski said.

The blast occurred about six hours later, a little after dawn.

Macedonia’s president, Boris Trajkovski, called it a “bloodthirsty act” and accused ethnic Albanian guerrillas of “ethnic cleansing.”

The turbulence on the ground made NATO’s first planned weapons collection today seem all the more insufficient to calm the situation.

Further undercutting the NATO operation was the announcement Sunday of the number of weapons that alliance soldiers plan to collect: 3,300. Although the Macedonian government asked NATO to disarm the guerrillas, some Macedonian officials already have been sharply critical of the plan. They call that figure only a tiny fraction of the guerrillas’ cache.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said the number of weapons that NATO planned to collect was “humiliating” because it was so few relative to the amounts that Macedonian research suggests the rebels have amassed.

The figure is also far lower than those given by Jane’s Defence Weekly, an authoritative publication on security issues. This week’s issue of the magazine estimates that among other materiel, the guerrillas have roughly twice as many assault rifles as NATO says it will collect and nearly twice as many antitank weapons.