Macedonia Gets New Coalition

This country’s disparate political parties forged a new coalition government Friday, offering a measure of stability amid a struggle to quell an ethnic Albanian insurgency.

The so-called national unity government emerged after a key ethnic Albanian party dropped its objections to joining. The coalition replaces Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski’s previous, smaller alliance.

The last holdout, the Party for Democratic Prosperity, had demanded that the government halt attacks on militants before talks could begin--and acquiesced after the army held its fire for the better part of a day.

Western organizations exerted their own pressure, alarmed that the escalating exchanges of machine-gun fire and mortar rounds would suck the fragile country into another Balkan war.

“The parties reiterated their common interest that the security situation in the country should be their basic task,” Georgievski said.

Resolving the crisis, however, may be the only goal the parties share. The new panel includes leftists and central-right conservatives, but few considered to be moderate. Members of the new Cabinet will be announced today, Georgievski said.

The rebels were pointedly not included in efforts to resolve the most serious crisis in Macedonia since it broke away from Yugoslavia a decade ago.

The government refuses to negotiate with the militants, describing them as terrorists bent on carving up the country to create a Greater Albania or Greater Kosovo. The militants say they are fighting for more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as a third of the country’s 2 million people and constitute the majority in neighboring Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia.