Macedonia Rebels: It's Not Over Yet
Macedonian forces launched a fresh offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas Wednesday in a drive to rout them from their remaining mountain hideouts, but the rebels said they're not finished yet.
Tank and mortar fire echoed across the valleys north of the capital Skopje as security forces began a two-pronged assault against guerrilla redoubts, three days after a major push against the rebels above the northwestern town of Tetovo.
The operation began shortly after dawn, close to the village of Gracani and further east in the Tanusevci area near the border with the Serbian province of Kosovo.
From Gracani, some 10 miles northwest of Skopje, the incessant boom of tank and mortar fire was heard through the day. By late afternoon columns of smoke rose along a long ridgeline as heavy attacks set forests alight.
A reporter in the hills on the Kosovo side of the border saw a Macedonian helicopter charge into position and fire rockets at rebel positions on the craggy mountain ridge.
Two United States Apache helicopters from NATO peace forces hovered just inside Kosovo, monitoring the battle.
"I think that very soon we will disperse the terrorists or they will withdraw into Kosovo," said army spokesman Blagoja Markovski. "At the moment our forces are 200 meters (yards) from the borderline."
The fighting was continuing and retreating rebels were firing on Macedonian security forces, government officials added. But the rebels no longer held any villages and had inflicted no casualties on Macedonian forces, they said.
Yet for their part the rebels threatened Wednesday to counter the new government offensive, suggesting that they would no longer hold their fire when faced with Macedonian army attacks.
Commander Sokoli, one of several regional rebel leaders, said senior commanders of the movement decided at a late afternoon meeting that they would strike back to reverse government progress made during a series of offensives that included the use of artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships.
The rebel threat is significant in that the government's attacks have met with little obvious resistance in recent days. While the army and special police units have peppered the hills outside of the country's second largest city, Tetovo, with mortar and artillery barrages, insurgents first responded only with occasional machine-gun fire and then with nothing at all.
In contrast to government claims of victory, the rebels suggest they have merely pulled back and regrouped in the rugged and largely inaccessible hills near Tetovo.
"We have more volunteers," Sokoli said, contending that the rebels were gaining in strength. It was not immediately possible to independently corroborate the claims.
He gave the government until midnight local time to change its strategy of excluding rebels from talks on Macedonia's future.
Macedonia's government refused to budge on the issue. Government spokesman Antonio Milososki dclared that "the terrorists will always get the same response from us."
The government, wary of sparking a Slav nationalist backlash, feels it cannot offer compromises to the ethnic Albanians until it has regained control of its territory.
Pushing the last rebels back toward their rear bases in Kosovo would clear the way for addressing the political demands of the Albanians, who say they account for more than 40 percent of Macedonia's two million people. Official figures say they are 23 percent.
In Brussels, European Union security chief Javier Solana said he had persuaded Macedonia's leaders to respond to the grievances of local Albanians by making political compromises.
Western leaders have urged Macedonia's Slav majority to defuse the resentment that has stoked the Albanian rebellion and roused fears of another major Balkan war.
In Skopje, officials said talks between the leading political parties on ways to ease inter-ethnic tension and tackle discrimination could begin very soon.
"The talks will start in the next couple of days and they will be conducted in several cities around Europe," said a senior government official on condition of anonymity.
Leaders of Albanian political parties say a change to the preamble of the constitution, which names Macedonian Slavs as the primary nation living in Macedonia, is one of their key demands.
"It is impossible for a multi-ethnic state to be claimed only by one nation," said Arben Xhaferi, the leader of the main ethnic Albanian DPA party and a key coalition partner in Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's government.
A major ground assault Sunday in the hills above Tetovo drove rebels out of positions they had held for 12 days and back into Albanian-dominated Kosovo.
But the insurgents, who military analysts say number a few hundred, had been clinging on to positions in the Macedonian hills farther east.
Ethnic Albanians say they face discrimination in education, employment and politics, and the guerrillas appear to have at least the tacit support of some in the Albanian community.
But the DPA has stayed inside Macedonia's ruling coalition through the month-long crisis and the rebels appear isolated.
Government leaders insist the insurgency is imported from Kosovo by ethnic Albanian extremists bent on separatist war.
Western leaders have condemned the guerrilla army and urged them to use the political arena to voice their grievances.
Albanian parties say they want Macedonians to agree to the use of the Albanian language in state institutions and the establishment of an Albanian state-funded university, and a new law that would decentralize local municipalities.
Concessions may be resisted by the majority Slav population, who worry that Macedonia, which only gained its independence from socialist Yugoslavia in 1991, would lose its identity.
But as a reward for working toward multi-ethnic stability, Brussels is dangling the prize ogreater links with the EU and an enhanced aid package.
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