Balkan powderkeg heats up

SKOPJE - The ethnic Albanian insurgency that threatens civil war in Macedonia was spreading yesterday as security forces failed to contain guerrillas who appear able to move at will along the mountain ridges bordering Kosovo.

European Union leaders were due to get a first-hand account of the crisis from Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski at their summit conference in Stockholm.

But he was unlikely to bear much hopeful news.

Just as they had threatened, the insurgents took their fight to the streets of Tetovo after the Government decided to ignore their unilateral ceasefire.

As they had warned, the gunmen also created a new flashpoint closer to the capital, Skopje, seizing the village of Gracani which was partly ablaze after battles with special police.

In Tetovo, police fired a hail of bullets at two ethnic Albanians who tried to throw a grenade into a machinegun post in Macedonia's battlefront town. The two died instantly.

Flak-jacketed police cradling sub-machineguns set up roadblocks on main roads and were searching all vehicles entering and leaving Tetovo. But the point was made that artillery cannot stop such attacks.

Two hours after nightfall, heavy firing could be heard from the same direction and mortar rounds whacked into unseen targets in the hillside.

A Government spokesman in the capital Skopje, indicating the political decision to proceed with an anti-insurgency offensive had been taken, said the Army was now in charge of operations.

Artillery rounds struck rebel-held hills overlooking Tetovo during the day but there was no way to assess their effect on the guerrillas, who appear to be highly mobile.

A local Albanian official in Tetovo said he feared there could be more violence in the city as a result of the dramatic shooting, shown on television to the nation of two million, a third of whom are ethnic Albanians.

Amid all this, a top-level European Union delegation held talks in Macedonia, trying to fan a dim spark of hope that the slide to civil war could be arrested.

The Government appeared to have been given a green light for tough action earlier this week by Western powers, who have strongly condemned the rebels as a small group of extremists bent on fomenting conflict in pursuit of separatist aims.

But they have passive sympathy among many Albanians that could turn to active support if ethnic polarisation deepens.

British defence officials said estimates of rebels numbers vary from 200 to 800. There was "nothing to give the impression that they are sophisticated and linked together."

"It is deeply political ... we could create the problem we are trying to avoid by sidelining the Albanians in Macedonia who are not a part of the extremist movement."

But in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, thousands of students marched, chanting: "Tetovo, Tetovo we are with you."

- REUTERS

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