New fighting erupted on Sunday in northern Macedonia between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces, on the eve of the signature of a peace accord meant to avert civil war in the country, but the flashpoint city of Tetovo was calm.
Military sources said "a new group of Albanian rebels, wearing the uniform of the Kosovo civil protection force, had crossed from Kosovo into Macedonia" before fighting restarted in the northern village of Radusa.
The road leading from the capital Skopje to Tetovo, the main ethnic-Albanian populated city in Macedonia, was also closed to traffic.
A military source said Tetevo itself was calm, if tense, after three hours of fierce fighting there late on Saturday, in which two people were injured.
No official reason was given for the closure of the road.
Despite the intensification of violence, a Western official told AFP the planned signature of an internationally-brokered peace accord scheduled for Monday would go ahead.
"We are changing nothing," the official said.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson and the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana are scheduled to attend the signing ceremony.
A framework peace deal was agreed on Wednesday between the Balkan country's Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political leaders, but persistent renewed clashes have raised doubts over whether the signing can go ahead as planned.
On Saturday the Macedonian defense ministry said nine members of the Macedonian security forces -- eight soldiers and one policemen -- had been injured in fighting in Radusa, which started on Friday.
The ministry accused rebels of entering Macedonian illegally from the neighboring Serbian province of Kosovo, whose population is mainly ethnic Albanian.
On Saturday Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski discussed the situation in his troubled country with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Trajkovski also wrote to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Robertson, asking them for stronger steps by NATO to patrol the mountainous border with Kosovo and to disarm rebel training bases there.
Macedonia has regularly accused the West of indirectly helping rebel fighters, whose logistical and supply base is in Kosovo.
Sunday's violence followed fierce clashes late on Saturday in Tetovo, the scene of much of the fighting since rebels launched an insurgency in February, officially to gain more rights for ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as one third of Macedonia's population of two million.
An AFP reporter in Tetovo said the town had been calm overnight. On Sunday morning a restaurant was still burning near the municipal stadium, the scene of the heaviest fighting there.
Rebels control some suburbs and are thought to be trying to push into parts of the town.
In a statement on Sunday the guerillas voiced concern at the latest outburst of violence in the former Yugoslav republic, accusing government forces of repressing the country's large Albanian minority.
In the statement published on the website of the National Liberation Army (NLA), the rebels' elusive political representative Ali Ahmeti said the NLA was "following with concern" the violence that has ensued since Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties reached a political accord last week.
In the rebel statement Ahmeti accused Skopje of "continuing the repression of the Albanian population ... burning private houses, religious sites and shops.” -- SKOPJE (AFP)
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