Macedonia Holds Fire at Deadline for Rebels

Heeding Western calls for restraint, Macedonian government forces held their fire Thursday as a deadline passed for ethnic Albanian rebels holed up in northern villages to surrender.

Sporadic clashes, which the army blamed on the militants, were reported early Thursday, and a brief firefight erupted later. But the front line, near Macedonia’s border with the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, remained quiet as the deadline passed at noon.

The restraint was in contrast to earlier government threats to “eliminate” the insurgents unless they heeded the ultimatum.

Without saying outright that authorities were extending the deadline, President Boris Trajkovski issued a statement saying the deadline pressure on the rebels had accomplished positive results. He did not elaborate.

The government decision to back off from an all-out offensive came after intense international lobbying, generated by fears that fighting in Macedonia could spill into neighboring countries.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson urged Macedonia’s new, multiethnic unity government to press ahead with reforms empowering the ethnic Albanian minority. This, he said, would “undermine the political agenda of the gunmen.”

Ethnic Albanians make up at least one-quarter of Macedonia’s 2 million people. The militants are demanding that the Macedonian Constitution be rewritten to upgrade their people’s minority status, but the government accuses them of trying to divide the country.

In another regional development, ethnic Albanian rebels in Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, agreed with Serb officials to demilitarize a divided village on the edge of a buffer zone with Kosovo.

The deal to pull out of Lucane--a village contested since November--came only days before Yugoslav troops are scheduled to return to the remaining part of the zone separating Kosovo from the rest of Serbia.