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TITLE: Macedonians Fear Impending Civil War |
AUTHOR: Danica Kirka |
PUB: AP |
DATE: May 5, 2001 |
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Soldiers hammered ethnic Albanian rebel positions with artillery fire again Saturday in an offensive that deepened fears among Macedonians that the country is on the verge of civil war. The bombardment follows a spate of recent ambushes against security forces - attacks showing the rebels have survived earlier government efforts to quash their movement. "We have young people dying,'' said Borjanka Stevkovska, nervously straightening the green onions stacked in her market stall in Skopje, the capital. "From one day to another, it just gets worse.'' The 52-year-old mother of two teen-age daughters can hardly bear to watch the evening news with its reports of dead soldiers, burning villages and diplomatic wrangling - the somber signposts warning of another Balkan country slowing slipping toward instability. Just 15 miles to the north, the government pummeled "selective'' targets, unleashing rockets from helicopter gunships and firing cannon and grenades at rebel command posts and sniper nests in villages dotting the border with Yugoslavia. So far, world leaders, including President Bush, have backed Macedonia in its steadfast refusal to negotiate with the rebels, whom the government views as terrorists trying to seize territory and carve out an ethnic Albanian state. The rebels argue that ethnic Albanians are treated as second-class citizens and are demanding that the Macedonian constitution be rewritten to give them more rights. The police and army ordered civilians in five villages to evacuate and take their documents along, describing it as a precaution. Authorities demanded that people in five other villages also leave amid claims that the insurgents were using 3,500 people as "human shields.'' About 150 women and children managed to flee the villages of Orizare, Slupcane and Vaksince after bribing the rebels with cash and jewelry, government spokesman Antonio Milososki said. But the rebels accused the government of firing indiscriminately at civilians and denied that villagers were being used as shields. Carlo Ungaro, the Organization for Security and Cooperation's Macedonia mission chief, told The Associated Press that at least seven civilians had been killed since the offensive began Thursday. He said Macedonian authorities were not allowing observers full access to the area because of security concerns. Three Macedonian soldiers were wounded when their vehicle hit an anti-tank mine planted by the rebels, Defense Ministry spokesman Gjorgji Trendafilov said. One of the soldiers lost both legs in the explosion. President Boris Trajkovski summoned leaders of major political parties, including ethnic Albanians, and announced an "agreed-upon'' five-point plan to solve the crisis, starting with an urgent evacuation of civilians from the fighting area. He pledged to include more representatives of ethnic minorities in a decentralized government; strengthen the rule of law; crack down on organized crime; include some minority languages in official use; and "strengthen the civil concept of Macedonia'' as a nation rather than balance the interests of the ethnic groups. Rumors circulated among ethnic Albanians in the capital that the government wants the civilians to flee so it can raze the border villages, creating an internal buffer zone between the rebels and their ethnic kin in the southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo. More subtle divisions between ethnic groups have cropped up in Skopje. Xhemajl Fazliu, 27, an ethnic Albanian, looked over his shoulder before complaining that his Slavic-speaking neighbors would no longer buy his cabbages, potatoes and paprikas. "Every day I would deal with the same people. Now they just greet me and go away,'' he said. "I come here, but I don't feel safe.'' The increasing unease follows days of riots that shook the southern city of Bitola after the funerals of some of eight soldiers killed in a rebel ambush April 28. The government describes the riots, which destroyed some 40 ethnic Albanian businesses, as an expression of outrage to terrorism. Minority ethnic Albanians, who account for roughly a third of Macedonia's 2 million people, suggest the melee was meant to convey a message that they had better watch out. Even the Macedonian leadership is concerned about further inflaming ethnic tensions in the country, where fighting between the government and the rebels first broke out in February and raged for weeks before subsiding in late March. Emilija Geleva, an adviser to Macedonia's prime minister, applauded the leadership for declining to release images of the soldiers slain in the April ambush, which she says showed that the men were slashed with knives. "Even without that, the mood became a little bit ... troubled,'' she said. ``Can you imagine if the pictures were seen?'' END |