Slow Progress Toward Peace in Macedonia

Efforts to keep up momentum in the peace negotiations between the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian rebels continued Friday with meetings between Western negotiators and the president and prime minister.

Today, the leaders of the country’s four major political parties--two ethnic Macedonian and two ethnic Albanian--are scheduled to meet with Western negotiators in Ohrid, a resort city in southern Macedonia.

A cease-fire between the two sides that has been in effect since Thursday morning was holding Friday. But by evening, there were reports of shooting near Tetovo, the city that has been at the center of much of the 5-month-old conflict. It is the country’s largest majority ethnic Albanian city.

U.S. envoy James Pardew and European Union negotiator Francois Leotard met with President Boris Trajkovski twice Friday, their offices said, while Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski held talks with ambassadors of the NATO countries in Macedonia. But according to state television, security concerns stopped Trajkovski and Georgievski from going to Tetovo to meet with ethnic Albanian and Western leaders there.

Meanwhile, other progress toward peace remained incremental, with what discussions there were still focused on the status of the Albanian language. International legal experts met for several hours to talk about how to frame a change in the constitution to accommodate Albanians’ demands that their language be accorded official status.

Currently, Macedonian is the only language with that status, and ethnic Macedonians fear that allowing the Albanian language to have any official standing would constitute the beginning of a deeper split in the country.

At least a quarter of Macedonia’s population is ethnic Albanian, and the group is the largest of the country’s minorities.

On Friday evening, Pardew and Leotard held a short meeting in the Tetovo City Hall with ethnic Albanian political leaders to discuss upgrading the status of the Albanian language.

After the talks, Arben Xhaferi--leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians, one of the country’s two main Albanian parties--expressed cautious optimism and emphasized how hard all sides are working to accommodate the demands of ethnic Albanians to elevate the status of their language. He also took pains to say that he did not view efforts to change the Albanian language’s status as attempts to diminish the Macedonian language.

“A big mistake has been made in Macedonia when greater use of the Albanian language is presented as abolishing the Macedonian language,” Xhaferi said.

As the talks go on, many Macedonians remain displaced by the fighting. According to government figures, more than 37,000 people who have fled their homes have registered with authorities, including the Red Cross. The actual number is believed to be much larger, however.

About four dozen ethnic Macedonians who fled the region around Tetovo remained camped Friday in front of the parliament building in Skopje, the capital. Beside them were the tractors on which they came and open wagons piled with their belongings--a reminder to political leaders of the cost of the violence.