Konflikti i Armatosur - Lufta ne Tetove 24 Korrik 2001

Diell Rexhepi
Diell Rexhepi
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Published 2018-10-31
All rights go to AP (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Ethnic Albanian rebels attacked an army barracks and clashed with troops in Tetovo on Tuesday.

The Macedonian Defence Ministry said that the rebels were advancing and had surrounded four nearby villages.

Macedonian television reported fresh shooting in Tetovo late Tuesday afternoon and more civilians were fleeing.

Amid mounting tensions, Macedonian authorities closed the Macedonia-Kosovo border, said Andrea Angeli, a spokesman for the U-N mission in Kosovo.

The clashes followed some of the worst fighting in Macedonia in months.

After the fighting around Tetovo stopped, a Macedonian television station reported that Peter Feith, NATO's special envoy to Macedonia, had won a fresh cease-fire pledge from Ali Ahmeti, the rebels' political leader.

Western diplomats have been trying to salvage peace talks designed to prevent a full-scale civil war in this troubled Balkan nation.

But their efforts came under fire on Tuesday, when the government's spokesman accused NATO and other international officials of siding with ethnic Albanian rebels.

The rebels say they are fighting for more rights within Macedonia, including official recognition of their language, but the Macedonian government accuses of them of being linked to separatist ethnic Albanian rebels in neighbouring Kosovo and says they are bent on carving a chunk of territory out of Macedonia.

During a brief visit to Camp Bondsteel, the U-S military base in neighbouring Kosovo, U-S President George W. Bush issued a statement on Tuesday backing efforts by Western diplomats to broker a peace settlement, and called on rebels and the Macedonian government to respect the cease-fire.

NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson called on the rebels to pull back to their original cease-fire positions, saying "provocations and encroachments are unacceptable and must stop."

He also rejected as false Macedonian allegations over the weekend that NATO-led forces in Kosovo had been resupplying ethnic Albanian armed groups, saying "NATO has not given, and would not give, material or moral support to these groups."
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