Word: tetovo
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...Macedonian Slavs make up the majority of the estimated 64,000 people displaced from villages in majority ethnic Albanian regions now controlled by the N.L.A. "We know this picture from Kosovo," said a black-clad elderly woman from the village of Neprosteno, near the majority ethnic Albanian city of Tetovo. "They're not going to disarm the N.L.A., they're just going to replace their old weapons with new, better ones." A sunburned younger man from the village took up the chorus: "This voluntary disarmament is a lie, they're just going to hand in their World War II guns...
...There are certainly plenty of people on both sides of the divide who would welcome the deal's demise, preferring to settle matters on the battlefield. Fighting has continued around Tetovo, a region in which the NLA's commanders are reputedly more hard-line than some of their comrades elsewhere in the country. And the razing of a centuries-old Orthodox monastery in their zone of control earlier this week underscores the deep nationalist hatred driving at least a section of the rebel movement - after all, blowing up a church is not exactly consistent with the claim to be fighting...
...advance team of 400 soldiers, soon to be accompanied by a further 3,100, on a 30-day mission to collect whatever weapons the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army deign to hand over. Of course many of those guerrillas, particularly the more militant factions based around Tetovo, are still actively using those weapons and it's hard to imagine they'll be ready to hand them over in the next couple of days or weeks when they're still being fired on a daily basis. No matter for NATO, of course, because its spokesmen insist that...
...disarm. On the other side, allegations of execution-style killings of ethnic-Albanian men by Macedonian police in one village during last week's fighting highlight the danger that the conflict has already spawned intractable hatreds that will not be soothed by any peace agreement. New gun battles in Tetovo Thursday were a reminder that the fighting hasn't ended despite the planned NATO deployment...
...there are also strong grounds for skepticism over the rebels' intentions, despite the optimism of the mediators. An ambush near Skopje on Wednesday saw 10 government troops killed, while reporters in Tetovo reported that guerrillas had once again seized parts of the city in fierce fighting. On Tuesday, Macedonian police raided a house in the capital and killed five ethnic-Albanian men accused of being guerrillas. Despite the political talks, fighting rages on, and there are few signs that the guerrillas are preparing to disarm - or that government forces will tolerate any perceived attempt by the guerrillas to expand their...