Peace Deal Agreed
arch...@erols.com
9 August 2001
Leading Macedonian and Albanian politicians agree on constitutional
amendments amidst continued violence on the ground.
by Vlado Jovanovski
SKOPJE, Macedonia--Ohrid, a medieval town in the far southwest of the
country on the shores of Lake Ohrid, is a sacred place for ethnic
Macedonians, perhaps as
much as Jerusalem is for Jews and Arabs. But odds are that Ohrid will
now become the Macedonian Dayton, the place where an historic agreement
between the
country▓s two biggest ethnic communities, the majority Macedonians and
minority Albanians, was reached.
The leaders of four largest parties in the country signed off on a peace
deal on 8 August after a series of setbacks which threatened to rock the
internationally
sponsored negotiations. The leaders only initialed the agreement in
Ohrid; a formal signing ceremony is scheduled for 13 August in the
capital Skopje, U.S. chief
mediator James Pardew and his EU counterpart Francois Leotard announced.
The agreement clears the way for the arrival of 3,000-strong,
British-led NATO force to
oversee the weapon decommissioning by the National Liberation Army
(UCK), an ethnic-Albanian guerilla group that in February launched
rebellion in the west and
north of the country.
.
The latest in the series of setbacks took place only hours before the
deal was initialed. On the morning of 8 August, on the Skopje-Tetovo
highway, a Macedonian
Army convoy of some 40 vehicles--including tanks, armored personnel
carriers and trucks--was ambushed by the UCK. Eight soldiers and two
officers were killed.
The ambush was followed by a swift response from the Macedonian security
forces, including helicopter gunships. Battles raged in the hills above
Tetovo and in the
city itself. Parts of Tetovo fell under UCK control for much of the day.
The fighting came after ethnic Macedonian police killed five suspected
UCK members on 7 August in a night raid on a house in a Skopje
neighborhood, raising
serious doubts about the ability of the four party leaders to influence
extremists in the armed forces on both sides. The fresh violence also
came amid frequent
reports from Ohrid that the parties had resolved all disputed issues and
that an agreement was imminent. The word on 7 August was that an
official signing
ceremony would be held in Skopje on 10 August. But Macedonian Prime
Minister Ljubco Georgievski, who is also the leader of the right-wing
nationalist Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian
National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), suspended his participation in the talks as
soon as the
word of the convoy ambush reached Ohrid. Only a few hours later,
Georgievski initialed the agreement together with the other three
leaders, surprising many even in
his own party.
The agreement envisages that the Albanian language will become the
second official language in municipalities where ethnic Albanians make
more than 20 percent
of population. The other bitterly disputed issue--that of the ethnic
makeup of the Macedonian police force and its command structure--was
resolved so that by 2004,
the ethnic makeup of the police will reflect that of the county itself.
(The last census in 1994 showed 66 percent ethnic Macedonians and 23
percent ethnic
Albanians.) In the next two years, the Interior Ministry will recruit
and train 1000 ethnic Albanians. The police will remain under central
government control, and
candidates for municipal police chief will be nominated by the interior
minister and appointed by municipal councils. At least one candidate
nominated by the
minister will have to come from the minority ethnic group dominant in
that municipality.
The issue of the religious communities▓ relation to the state was
expected to be resolved by removing the controversial article in the
Macedonian constitution that
grants the Macedonian Orthodox Church exclusive entitlement to state
support. Instead, an amendment will be added to the constitution giving
the same rights to
the Islamic Community--most Macedonian ethnic Albanians are Muslim--as
well as to the small but very influential Catholic Church.
The forthcoming signing of the agreement will mark the completion of the
second phase of the President Boris Trajkovski▓s plan, which was
announced in early June.
The first phase saw the signing of a cease-fire agreement on 6 July. The
arrival of the Macedonia Force (MFOR), the NATO force that will
supervise the disarming
and disbanding of the UCK, was envisaged as the third phase. Precise
details of the operation are still under discussion.
HURDLES REMAIN
The NATO spokesman in Skopje, Major Barry Johnson, says the
operation--code-named Essential Harvest--will start 48 hours after the
North Atlantic Council (NAC)
in Brussels gives a go-ahead for the MFOR mission. The operation will
last at least 30 days. Johnson stressed on 8 August, however, that two
additional sets of
documents must be agreed upon and signed by the parties before the NAC
can clear the way for the MFOR deployment. Ali Ahmeti, the UCK political
leader, needs
to sign a technical document specifying weapons and equipment his force
will hand over to NATO. At the same time, the Macedonian government is
required to
issue a statement granting amnesty to all UCK fighters who did not
commit crimes against humanity.
The chief NATO representative in Skopje, Ambassador Peter Feith, who
mediates between the Macedonian authorities and Ahmeti, told President
Trajkovski on 7
August that Ahmeti was ready to sign the following statement: ⌠We
welcome and accept the offer of the president of the Republic of
Macedonia to exempt from
criminal prosecution those UCK members who disarm voluntarily, with the
exception of those who committed crimes in the International Criminal
Tribunal for Former
Yugoslavia jurisdiction. Likewise, UCK members wish to take up the
Macedonian president▓s offer to reintegrate into society in accordance
with the plan of
President Boris Trajkovski and the ▒Framework Agreement for Overcoming
the Crisis.▓■
The correlation between the disarming of the UCK and the procedure of
adopting the proposed constitutional amendments is still disputed.
Stojan Andov, the
speaker of the parliament, said the changes will be adopted only after
operation Essential Harvest has been completed. The ethnic Albanian
parties fear obstruction
in the parliament and insist that the amendments be adopted before the
UCK is disarmed. NATO Ambassador to Macedonia Hansjorg Eiff suggested a
compromise.
⌠There should be certain parallelism. We are ready to come to Macedonia
to start the mission of decommissioning of not only arms and
ammunitions, but also the
UCK uniforms so that this organization disappears from the scene
completely. We have pretty good information on what the UCK has and will
insist that we get all
of its weapons, especially heavy weapons such as mortars, antitank
mines, rockets, heavy weapons, and machine guns. But the Macedonian
side, too, needs to
show proof that it will stick to the signed political agreement and that
there will be no problem regarding the adoption of the constitutional
amendments,■ Eiff said.
Leotard supported this position, saying the whole procedure in the
parliament should be completed within 45 days.
Caution on the part of Western mediators is well founded. There are many
signs that a number of parliamentary deputies of the two leading
Macedonian parties,
VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democratic Party of Macedonia (SDSM), are not
ready to support constitutional reform so long as large parts of the
northwest of the
country are in effect controlled by the UCK. Smaller ethnic Macedonian
parliamentary parties are even more skeptical. The leader of Democratic
Alternative, Vasil
Tupurkovski--who once was a leading proponent of an early agreement with
the ethnic Albanian minority--described the Ohrid agreement as ⌠tragic
for Macedonia
because it will lead to partition of the country.■ Tupurkovski said six
deputies from his party will vote against constitutional changes.
Milanco Cerkezov of the
extreme right-wing VMRO-Vistinske (Real VMRO) began a hunger-strike. His
party colleague Jordan Boskov said he would continue when Cerkezov
⌠reaches the
end of his protest.■
The leader of the ultra-nationalist Macedonian Action (MAAK), Straso
Angelovski, dismissed the agreement as treason and said that an ethnic
Macedonian
paramilitary force will be formed in October when ⌠events will take
another turn.■ ⌠We demand that NATO, the OSCE, EU, KFOR, and Red Cross
missions, as well
as all other masked spy nests ┘ leave the country,■ Angelovski told the
press. At the same time, an organization calling itself Gemidzii, after
an early 20th century
Macedonian terrorist group, announced that they have sentenced all
Macedonian political, military, and religious leaders to death ⌠because
they have turned
Macedonia into a servant of U.S. imperialism.■
But given that so far a half a dozen such obscure groups have announced
their formation--while their activity has been limited to demolishing
ethnic Albanian-owned
shops in Skopje--hardly anyone believes that the death-threats are
serious. Nevertheless, bold leadership on the part of the leading
Macedonian politicians will be
required in the coming days to ensure the majority of the population
supports the Ohrid agreement.
Vlado Jovanovski is a journalist with the Skopje magazine Forum.
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June R Harton
<arch...@erols.com> wrote in message news:3B784F0...@erols.com...
> Peace Deal Agreed
> 9 August 2001
Here Gail:
PRESS RELEASES FROM THE PRESIDENTIAL CABINET
......................................................
6. Education and Use of Languages
6.1. With respect to primary and secondary education, instruction will be
provided in the students' native languages, while at the same time uniform
standards for academic programs will be applied throughout ......
.....................................................
Gail, does this mean emancipation for the Gypsies? Will FYROM
now have to provide Romany teachers?????!!!!!
from: Spirit Of The Real Makedon
(using June's e-mail to communicate to you)!
........The heart of Macedonia was always Greek