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Macedonia peace deadline passes

Soldiers ride in a lorry towards front-line positions in the village of Vaksince earlier this week
Soldiers ride in a lorry towards front-line positions in the village of Vaksince earlier this week  


SKOPJE, Macedonia -- A deadline has passed for ethnic Albanian rebels to lay down their arms in northern Macedonian villages with no sign of a threatened army offensive.

The government issued the ultimatum on Tuesday, warning the insurgents they faced an all-out assault if they failed to comply by noon on Thursday (1000 GMT).

CNN's Chris Burns said there was no sign of the rebels pulling out of the villages, 16 miles (25 kilometres) north of Skopje, and the area was quiet, although gunfire was exchanged overnight.

However, government observers said on Thursday morning that up to 850 ethnic Albanian civilians were seen moving out of the rebel-held villages of Opaje and Nikustac following two weeks of clashes in the region bordering Kosovo.

Burns said if this civilian movement continued then the government of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia would hold its fire because of the wish to avoid casualties.

Top European leaders have urged Skopje to show restraint for fear that civilian casualties would drive ethnic Albanian parties out of the new coalition government.

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The government blames the rebels for sporadic new clashes and accuses them of holding civilians as human shields.

Burns said exchanges of fire near the village of Slupcane on Wednesday night and Thursday morning indicated the rebels had no intention of pulling back.

Meanwhile, in an address to the nation on Wednesday, President Boris Trajkovski said Macedonia was poised to attack, and warned of a possible all-out army onslaught.

Appealing to civilians to leave rebel-held villages, he said security forces had been "ordered to work in a way that will minimise the risk of civilian casualties, but to act decisively.

"It is very difficult to find a balance between effective use of force and efforts to avoid civilian casualties," he said.

A European Union delegation, led by Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, visited Skopje on Wednesday. The three-member team, who also included EU Commissioner for External Relations Chris Patten, met President Trajkovski in an effort to diffuse the growing tensions.

Alarmed by the escalating fighting between government troops and ethnic Albanian militants, Macedonia's leaders on Sunday created a broad-based coalition government, uniting all major ethnic Albanian and Macedonian Slavic parties.

Macedonian police officer
A Macedonian police officer looks towards positions of ethnic Albanian rebels in the village of Matejce, near Kumanovo  

The new government faces the task of bridging deep differences sparked by distrust between the majority Slavs and the ethnic Albanian minority and demands by that minority to have the country's constitution changed to guarantee them greater rights.

Burns said there were divisions within the government over how much force troops should use against the rebels.

The Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity had argued for a softer response than that proposed by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski in an effort to isolate them politically.







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