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Solana bids to avert Macedonia war

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Senior international leaders are travelling to Macedonia in a bid to rescue the deteriorating military and political situation from the brink of war.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived in Skopje on Sunday and will be followed on Monday by NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

Their arrival in the region coincides with Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's statement that the government was launching consultations on whether to declare a state of war against ethnic Albanian rebels.

EU sources said Solana would go straight into talks with Georgievski and President Boris Trajkovski.

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Javier Solana, EU Commissioner: There must be dialogue

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Robert Frowick, OSCE Special Representative: Macedonia has shown restraint

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Journalist Vladimir Gjuzelov: state of war declaration feared

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On Monday he and Robertson are scheduled to meet leaders of the main political parties and hold further top-level talks.

Georgievski said on Saturday that any war declaration decision could be taken at a parliament session on Tuesday.

But EU foreign ministers, meeting in Sweden, said they were opposed to such a move.

"Rather than talk about a state of war, we should discuss a state of peace," Solana said before leaving for Skopje.

Speaking for the EU, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said: "We strongly condemn the terrorist acts of the Albanian extremists.

"We also urged the Macedonian government not to fall into the trap of provocations, which is what they are."

Lindh and EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten are to visit Macedonia and other Balkan countries within the next few days.

The move is designed to give the government a freer hand in attacks against militants hunkered down near the border with Kosovo.

A state of war declaration would give Trajkovski the ability to rule by decree and appoint a government of his choosing.

Borders could be sealed, a nationwide curfew imposed and demonstrations banned.

Meanwhile, the bombardment of rebel position by Macedonian troop resumed on Sunday.

Reporters near the villages of Vakcince and Slupcane, some 40 km (25 miles) northeast of the capital Skopje, said shells were hitting the two hamlets nearly every minute at one stage in the afternoon.

Artillery explosions were also heard in the northwestern Macedonian city of Tetovo, apparently coming from the direction of mountain villages close to the Kosovo border, reporters in Tetovo said.

A team of the International Committee of the Red Cross, allowed to deliver humanitarian aid to Vakcince and Slupcane, expressed serious concern over "hundreds of civilians" hiding in the basements and described their situation as "precarious."

Earlier on Sunday, Macedonian state media broadcast at five-minute intervals a government appeal for thousands of residents of seven besieged villages in the northern Kumanovo region to evacuate and leave the area of fighting.

In Pristina, the Kosovo capital, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that more than 1,000 people had fled from Macedonia to Kosovo in the last few days.

So far, world leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush, have backed Macedonia in its refusal to negotiate with the rebels, who the government views as terrorists trying to seize territory and carve out an ethnic Albanian state.

The rebels argue that ethnic Albanians here are treated as second-class citizens and are demanding that the Macedonian constitution be rewritten to give them more rights.



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