Word: albanian
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...NATO's reluctance to put its foot down in Macedonia is understandable: Confronting Albanian extremism - which the alliance itself appears has identified as the primary source of the current violence there - potentially exposes alliance troops to risks of a backlash both in Macedonia and in Kosovo. And there is no doubt that the Macedonian military's tendency to rain down bombs and shells on villages occupied by the guerrillas will drive many Macedonian Albanians into the arms of the rebels. Yet the absence of any strong disincentive for the guerrillas to continue fighting may be the fatal flaw of NATO...
...Macedonian government has agreed to a cease-fire with the ethnic-Albanian rebels of the National Liberation army, to begin at midnight local time tonight. Despite that welcome development, there's still a significant possibility of a broader conflict to come, because the guerrillas' insurgency appears to have triggered the beginnings of that by-now familiar Balkan ritual of "ethnic cleansing." The rebels reportedly expelled some 600 non-Albanians from the villages they captured on Sunday, while elsewhere in Macedonia ethnic-Albanian business owners have shut up shop and fled following threats by a shadowy Macedonian militia group...
...some verbal wrist-slapping from NATO, the reward for that strategy may turn out to be a place at the negotiating table to determine Macedonia's future. The failure of the alliance to act on its harsh criticisms of the rebels also signaled an ambivalence to the mainstream ethnic-Albanian parties in Skopje, who have ratcheted up their political demands for a bi-national state to the point that accord seems beyond reach...
...current talks being encouraged by the U.S. involve constitutional changes to accord the Albanian minority greater rights in Macedonia. But having so successfully determined the agenda through their insurgency, it takes a substantial leap of faith (and blindness to the region's recent history) to imagine that the hard men in the hills will simply turn in their Kalashnikovs when the lawyers in Skopje have finessed constitutional changes...
...MACEDONIA A Chance at Peace nato promised to send some 3,000 troops to Macedonia to help with disarmament of ethnic Albanian rebels if a political settlement could be reached and rebels persuaded to lay down their arms. But conditions for the deployment seemed remote. Talks in Skopje between parties representing the country's ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slav ethnic groups foundered on differences over constitutional changes. Government forces then broke an 11-day-old cease-fire by launching an offensive on three villages in the hills just outside Skopje...