President Boris Trajkovski of Macedonia will host a meeting of political party leaders in Skopje on Sunday as the divided government struggles to deal with an ethnic Albanian guerrilla uprising.
On the table will be a proposed amnesty for rebel fighters and discussions on constitutional reform to boost the status of the ethnic Albanian minority, a source in Trajkovski's office said Sunday.
The "partial amnesty" will be offered to those "forced to take up arms" but not to the rebels' leaders and ideologues or those guilty of killing soldiers or police, presidential security adviser Dinka Ilkovo-Boskovic told AFP.
The amnesty idea was floated earlier in the week and was given a cautious welcome by some ethnic Albanian leaders but rejected out of hand by the rebels, who vowed to fight on until they are accepted as negotiating partners.
Sunday's talks are the latest in a series set up under pressure from NATO and the European Union designed to get party leaders talking about how to defuse the crisis by improving the rights of the ethnic Albanian minority.
The four main parties in Macedonia, two representing Slavs and two ethnic Albanians, joined a government of national unity on May 13.
But the body has scarcely been functioning as a government as fighting between troops and rebels continues in the north of the country and the parties squabble among themselves.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski admitted that it was all but inevitable that the constitution would have to be changed to accommodate ethnic Albanian demands for equal status, but no agreement has yet been reached -- SKOPJE (AFP)
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