The European Union's new special envoy to Macedonia, Francois Leotard, arrived in Skopje Thursday to push for a ceasefire after a night of fighting between government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels around guerrilla-held villages in the north.
Leotard, a former French defense minister, aims to quell escalating tensions generated by the five-month ethnic Albanian guerrilla rising that has threatened to push the multi-ethnic state into another Balkans bloodbath.
His four-month mission will be to represent EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana and will start "immediately,” an official in Brussels said before his departure.
Leotard was obliged to clarify late Wednesday a statement he made earlier on French radio when he appeared to be calling for direct talks between the guerrillas and the Macedonian government, something Skopje refuses outright.
He later specified that EU policy had not changed and that no representatives of the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army -- whose insurrection has plunged the country into crisis -- would have a seat at the political talks.
He said his first mission was to negotiate a ceasefire. Solana announced a truce during a visit here Sunday which allowed NATO to escort hundreds of rebels out of a town on the edge of Skopje to remove a direct threat to the capital.
The move provoked an anti-government and anti-Western backlash among Macedonian Slavs in the capital, who saw the operation as their leaders caving in to Western pressure to go soft on the rebels.
Rioters fired automatic rifles in the air and dozens stormed parliament to trash the office of President Boris Trajkovski, while graffiti protests on the walls of the capital said "Solana = Satan," with the name of NATO scrawled next to a swastika.
There was a lull in the fighting in the north of the country as the French diplomat flew in after a night of clashes between the rebels and the army around the guerrilla stronghold of Slupcane, in the Black Mountains between Skopje and the city of Kumanovo.
After a day of artillery and mortar duels, the night saw rebel snipers firing at Macedonian army positions near the village, army spokesman Colonel Blagoja Markovski said.
The army responded with mortars and machineguns, Markovski said.
Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski said this week there could be no permanent ceasefire until the rebels agree to down their weapons under a presidential peaceful plan which would grant them an amnesty if they allow NATO troops to disarm them.
NATO has said it is ready to deploy around 3,000 troops in Macedonia for a brief operation to collect the guerrillas' weapons, but there has been no response yet from the rebel leaders.
The alliance, whose chief George Robertson said there would be no talks with "murderous thugs" and "terrorists" of the NLA, said it had "facilitated" the rebel withdrawal from the Skopje suburb of Aracinovo to remove the threat to the city and build confidence between the two sides.
The West sees a negotiated package of political reforms to give Albanians more rights as the only way to end the crisis, and has urged elected leaders from both ethnic groups to hammer out a deal and allow NATO to move in and decommission rebel arms.
But the talks have been hampered by mutual recriminations and broke down completely last week. They were about to resume when around 6,000 furious Macedonian Slavs descended on the parliament in protest at the rebel evacuation from Aracinovo.
No date has been set for a resumption of dialogue, while fighting was also reported by Markovski around Tetovo late Wednesday and Nikustak, the village where US troops dropped off the rebels from Aracinovo.
Rebel mortars landed on the edge of Kumanovo in heavy fighting Wednesday, Markovski said, although no injuries were reported -- SKOPJE (AFP)
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