May 6, 2001
Macedonia's prime minister said today he would ask Parliament to declare a state of war, just hours after soldiers hammered ethnic Albanian rebel positions with artillery fire in an ever-escalating offensive. The comments from Prime Minister Ljbuco Georgievski came before an emergency session of his governing party leadership, which followed a week of attacks on rebels holding ground in the northern part of the country.
Georgievski told reporters that one of the issues on the party's agenda tonight would be the declaration of a state of war in Macedonia, to be taken up by Parliament. "... What is happening on the territory of Macedonia is war," he told reporters outside the meeting in the Parliament building. "Those people who are doing this have the aim of conquering the territory."
Under the Macedonian constitution, a declaration of a state of war can only occur with the approval of a two-thirds majority of the 120-member Parliament. That would indicate that 81 members would have to vote for the measure - including 26 ethnic Albanian deputies. The body is expected to meet Tuesday, but the statements from Georgievski seemed to indicate that he planned to try to re-shuffle the existing government and declare a state of emergency to deal with the crisis. The sense of emergency followed an offensive that has deepened fears among Macedonians that the country is on the verge of civil war.
The concerns come after 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 teenage daughters can hardly bear to watch the evening news with its reports of dead soldiers, burning villages and diplomatic wrangling - the sombre signposts warning of another Balkan country slowing slipping toward instability. Just 25km to the north, the government pummelled "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 US President George W 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 jewellery, 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 Organisation for Security and Cooperation's Macedonia mission chief, told The Associated Press that at least seven civilians had been killed since the offensive began on 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, Defence 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 decentralised government; strengthen the rule of law; crack down on organised 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.
Rumours 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 neighbours 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 two 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?"
NATO and the European Union, fearing fresh bloodshed, are sending their top envoys to Macedonia. The EU's security affairs chief, Javier Solana, planned to arrive tomorrow for meetings with Macedonian leaders, and NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson was to join him on Monday. The rebels have called for a cease-fire and talks with Trajkovski on measures to prevent civil war. But Geleva rejects the idea that Macedonia is a nation on the brink, describing the week's attacks merely as sustained action against a guerrilla force. "We have to defend our territory," she said. "Every country, every government, would be doing that."
