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Macedonian Slavs riot over Nato peace deal

By Christian Jennings in Skopje and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels

SLAV nationalists stormed the Macedonian parliament in Skopje last night, as up to 10,000 people demonstrated against their government's co-operation with Nato in escorting besieged Albanian rebels to safety in an effort to bring peace to the country.

The demonstrators demanded the resignation of President Boris Trajkovski, while a small group of several dozen protesters smashed their way through police cordons and broke into the parliament building. Mr Trajkovski was in the building, meeting the heads of the country's political parties, as a screaming crowd gathered in the square outside waving Macedonian flags and shouting, "Resign, Trajkovski" and "Nato traitors".

Police in body armour and with assault rifles struggled to form defensive lines outside the parliament, but protesters reached a balcony at the front of the building where they tore down the national flag.

Earlier there were enormous cheers as lines of military reservists, waving flags, pushed to the front of the crowd, which smashed black limousines belonging to the presidential motorcade and hurled computers out of the parliament building's windows. Dozens of police stood by and did nothing to stop the riots.

They did not even react when a small group of demonstrators pulled out guns and opened fire into the air. But heavy machine-gun fire was later heard outside the parliament, and the crowds were said to have scattered.

Slav paramilitary organisers were believed to be behind the protests, which followed a deal between Nato, the Macedonian government and Albanian rebels whereby the self-styled National Liberation Army was allowed to leave the Skopje suburb of Aracinovo under heavy Nato escort after being pinned down by four days of heavy government artillery and tank fire.

A convoy of coaches left Aracinovo in what rebel commanders claimed was a "sign of goodwill". The start of the evacuation brought closer the possibility that hundreds of British troops could deploy under a Nato plan to disarm the ethnic Albanian rebels, whose five-month insurgency had brought them to within three miles of Skopje.

But last night Macedonian artillery again opened fire on rebel positions in the western town of Tetovo after rebel forces allegedly fired rockets at a police checkpoint. Western officials said as night fell that up to 50 American and French Nato vehicles were inside Aracinovo waiting to escort out about 300 armed rebels as well as more than 100 Albanian civilians, terrified of revenge attacks by Macedonian Slavs. Another Western diplomat said Aracinovo was now a demilitarised zone.

Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers sent a warning to Macedonia that it could face diplomatic isolation and a suspension of further EU aid if it tried to crush the ethnic Albanian rebels rather than negotiate.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2001