Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Colin Powell urges peace, but a walk through the capital city reveals a country on the verge of civil war.
Apr 13, 2001 | Only a few weeks after ethnic Albanian rebels seized villages along Macedonia's northern border with Kosovo, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited here Thursday to assure leaders of this small Balkan country that the U.S. supports their efforts to find a political solution to the country's ethnic tensions.
Though Powell praised the Macedonian government's restraint in using military force to combat the rebels known as the National Liberation Army (NLA), he also stressed that Macedonia must intensify efforts to bring its minority Albanian population more fully into the country's political and economic life.
"Multi-ethnicity need not be a source of conflict," Powell told a press conference in the Macedonian parliament after an evening meeting with foreign ministers from the region. "Diversity can be made into a strength, if channels are opened for all to be made part of the democratic and political process."
Powell's visit carries tremendous weight in a country desperate for signs of reassurance that the international community, and its strongest member, the U.S., will not allow Macedonia to experience the devastating ethnic conflicts that have riven other former Yugoslav republics including Croatia, Bosnia and Serb-held Kosovo. But while Powell pledged political and economic support for Macedonia, his statements suggested that the Bush administration would be more reluctant than the previous Clinton administration to involve the U.S. military in any crisis here.
Powell conveyed "the solid expression of support for Macedonia from President Bush and the U.S.," and expressed a commitment to remain engaged politically and economically and provide military support as appropriate. "We also provide an example of what can be done in a multi-ethnic society such as we have in the U.S. and how that multi-ethnicity can be a source of strength," Powell said.
The secretary's visit comes after two weeks of uneasy quiet here. In late March, Macedonian security forces managed, with the aid of four Ukrainian helicopter gunships and military advice from Britain and the U.S., to rout some 800 ethnic Albanian rebels who had seized six mountain villages above Tetovo, Macedonia's second largest city. The rebels threatened to "make Macedonia tremble" if the country's coalition government does not accelerate reforms to give its large ethnic-Albanian minority more language and political rights. Ethnic Albanians make up about a third of the population of 2 million people here.
Unlike the Kosovo Liberation Army, of which many of the NLA rebels are veterans, the NLA rebels took care not to demand a separate state or a change of international borders. Instead, the rebels say they are fighting to force Macedonia to give its Albanians more civil rights.
It's a message that appeals to many of Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, who say they are treated like second-class citizens.
"We Albanians are paying taxes here, we are citizens of Macedonia, but we are still waiting for the state to do something good for us," says Arsim, 27, an ethnic Albanian university student from Tetovo, who declined to give his last name. "We expected so much from democracy, but it has delivered us nothing. We have been waiting for 10 years for the situation to be better. This is way beyond frustration. I don't like to fight. I would prefer to fight for my rights in a political way. But this generation of politicians is totally corrupted."
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