Macedonia Claims 30 Rebels Die in Clashes

Macedonia said it killed about 30 ethnic Albanian guerrillas Saturday in heavy bombardment of rebel-held villages and two nearby convoys, shattering a lull in fighting meant to give politicians a chance to resolve tensions.

Mortar, machine-gun, rocket and tank fire rocked the village of Vaksince a day after the nation’s leaders agreed to create a coalition government. Politicians haggled Saturday over key posts.

The country agreed to a unity government Friday after a key ethnic Albanian party dropped its objections. The Party for Democratic Prosperity had demanded that the government halt attacks on the militants before talks could begin and signed on after the army refrained from shooting for a day.

The fighting Saturday, however, was likely to escalate tensions and complicate attempts to reach a political consensus on a broad coalition.

“The number of terrorists killed today is about 30,” army spokesman Col. Blagoja Markovski said in Kumanovo. The casualty figure could not be confirmed independently.

Suggesting that the rebels fired first, Markovski accused them of abusing government efforts to solve the crisis.

“They misused our goodwill,” he said.

The army sent six helicopter gunships toward Vaksince late Saturday morning. Four tanks were also seen moving into the region, indicating that government forces were gearing up to respond in force to the new outburst.

Army officials said the choppers were being used only for surveillance. But photographers close to the front line later saw them blasting the village with rockets, as tanks also opened up on the houses suspected of sheltering the rebels.

The first sign of the government reshuffle was the resignation early Saturday of Foreign Minister Sergan Kerim. Kerim had won wide respect for his efforts to persuade Western leaders to back Macedonia in its efforts to quash the rebel insurgency.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski accepted the resignation and gave Kerim the top spot in the country’s U.N. mission in New York.

Parties moved forward with talks to choose individual ministers, a process expected to last until today’s parliament session to approve the new government.

The creation of a broad-based coalition encompassing all major Slav and ethnic Albanian political parties is meant to give the leadership a chance at settling such ethnic Albanian demands as changing the constitution to give the minority equal rights with majority Slavs.

The militants of the National Liberation Army say the changes are the most basic step to empowering Macedonia’s ethnic Albanians, who make up at least a quarter of the nation’s 2 million people.

The rebels themselves were not invited to the bargaining table.