Macedonia Rejects Offer of Talks, Calls In Army

Fighting between security forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas resumed Thursday after a 24-hour lull as the Macedonian government spurned a rebel offer of peace talks and put the army in charge of a struggling anti-insurgency campaign.

Two suspected guerrillas were killed and four government troops were wounded in scattered confrontations as unilateral cease-fires on both sides ended, dashing faint hopes for a quick settlement of an armed conflict over ethnic minority rights.

For the first time since combat erupted in the region a month ago, the government sent paramilitary police officers into the hills above Tetovo, de facto capital of the country’s disaffected ethnic Albanian minority, in an effort to flush guerrillas from at least six village strongholds.

“They have been provoking us for 34 days, and we are responding,” said government spokesman Antonio Milosevski.

Army and police units in Tetovo also resumed long-range artillery fire into the rebel-occupied hills. Residents of the city said they heard no return fire during or after the three-hour barrage.

A rebel spokesman contacted by Reuters denied a government claim that the guerrillas were abandoning the strongholds. Journalists in the area said that rebel fortifications and sniper positions were still in place and that there was no sign of mass retreat.

The battle moved briefly into Tetovo’s tense, mostly deserted streets when two ethnic Albanian men stopped their Suzuki compact at a police checkpoint. Television footage showed one man getting out of the car and cocking his arm as if to throw something at the police, who then opened fire, killing both men. Police said the would-be thrower died clutching a live grenade.

Macedonian police and soldiers said they came under attack Wednesday night and Thursday at three points along their country’s border with Kosovo, the separatist Serbian province where ethnic Albanians are in the majority. Three soldiers and a policeman were reported wounded.

The heaviest border fighting was reported in Gracane, which appeared to be in rebel hands after a substantial guerrilla force entered from Kosovo before dawn Thursday. Police said that they fought back throughout the day and that by evening, several buildings in the village were in flames.

The rebels say their National Liberation Army is a home-grown movement fighting for greater civil rights in Macedonia, where about one-quarter of the population of 2 million is ethnic Albanian.

Macedonian officials Thursday seized on the border clashes to support their claim that the insurgency is being run from Kosovo. They said the rebel aim is to carve off northern Macedonia and unite it with Kosovo in an independent ethnic Albanian state.

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski instructed his army to take all necessary measures to control the border and crush the insurgency, which his government had been treating as a police matter.

Rejecting peace talks with the rebel leaders, who had called a unilateral cease-fire, Trajkovski ordered his forces to move against guerrilla-held villages. The attacks ended the government’s own cease-fire, which had been called to give civilians 24 hours to get out of harm’s way.

Trajkovski said negotiations on ethnic Albanian grievances, such as linguistic and job discrimination, were still possible--but only through parliament and other established institutions of Macedonia’s multiethnic government, not directly with the rebels.

The government took the offensive with explicit backing from Western officials.

“The message from the West is very clear: The extremist groups must lay down their weapons,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, speaking for the European Union during a visit Thursday with Macedonian officials in Skopje, the capital.

The U.N. Security Council and the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also condemned ethnic Albanian violence as “terrorist” and “extremist.”

Sweden pledged 200 more troops to help the North Atlantic Treaty Organization reinforce the Kosovo-Macedonia border and cut off the flow of arms to the rebels. NATO troops have been patrolling Kosovo as part of a U.N.-led peacekeeping force since the alliance’s 11-week air war in 1999 ended repressive rule of the province by Yugoslavia and its dominant republic, Serbia.

The United States and France announced Thursday that they will send pilotless aircraft to help monitor the border.

But Western governments, including the U.S., are reluctant to put their troops inside Macedonia, whose own forces are considered poorly trained and ill-equipped to fight a war against determined guerrillas.

In Tetovo, the government’s show of force Thursday failed to instill much confidence that the fighting will end soon.

Flak-jacketed policemen cradling submachine guns used dumpsters and tree trunks to set up dozens of checkpoints as they searched vehicles entering and leaving the city. Two sentries crouched behind a concrete pillar between a car wash and an Internet cafe, guarding one approach to police headquarters.

The streets were eerily quiet after the outgoing artillery barrage at midday. Shops were closed, and most residents stayed indoors. More than 200 people left on five charter buses to Istanbul, Turkey.

“People are running away from this shooting,” Asani Ramadan, a 45-year-old ethnic Albanian teacher, said after putting his wife and two of their three children on one of the buses, which will take them to stay with relatives. “It’s been constant, nonstop for the past 10 days. I don’t think the army can control it.”