Macedonia rebels die in clashes

Government forces and ethnic Albanian militants continue to face off in Macedonia's northern villages

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Clashes with rebels in the mountains near Macedonia's second city on Friday cast a shadow over government peace overtures.

President Boris Trajkovski has offered to grant ethnic Albanian militants an amnesty if they lay down their arms.

However, violence in the region has continued, and eight rebels were killed on Friday near the village of Lisec, outside Tetovo.

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Army and police sources had earlier reported that fighting had spread to the hills above Tetovo, west of the capital Skopje, where the latest insurgency to endanger Balkan stability first erupted in late February.

The initial fighting in the area lasted a few weeks, before government troops declared what turned out to be a premature victory. After a brief lull, fighting broke out again a few weeks ago east of Tetovo.

Though details were sketchy, the Associated Press reported that heavy detonations resounded across Tetovo early on Friday.

Military sources reported that government positions on the Sara Mountain had been the target of mortar and machine gun attacks, Associated Press reported.

The army and police fired back after mortars were reportedly fired by rebels holed up in the villages of Sipkovica and Brodet, about six miles north of Tetovo, AP said, citing military reports. No-one was said to be injured.

In a separate development, Macedonian police reimposed a night-time curfew on Tetovo and another northern city, Kumanovo, where gunfights have also sporadically flared in recent weeks.

The fighting has left thousands of civilians in besieged villages trapped in their basements, where food and other supplies are said to be running low and aid agencies have been unable to reach them.

Thousands of other civilians have fled on foot and in cars either south to Skopje or north, across the border, into Kosovo.

The province in southern Serbia has been under U.N. administration since Yugoslav troops were driven out after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign that ended in June 1999.

In recent days, Yugoslav troops have been invited back by NATO into a buffer zone in southern Serbia that had been imposed by the western alliance at the end of the Kosovo war to put a wedge between ethnic Albanians and Yugoslav security forces.

Western pressure

Western officials, led by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, are hoping that rival factions in Macedonia will be able to follow suit and put their hostilities aside.

Under pressure from the West to end the insurgency before it can spill into a wider conflict, Macedonian officials have signalled a willingness to make concessions to the country's minority ethnic Albanians.

They represent up to one-third of Macedonia's two million citizens but tend to feel they enjoy fewer rights than the majority Macedonian Slavs.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, in an abrupt about face, said his government could rewrite the country's constitution to upgrade the status of the ethnic Albanians.

"We have an obligation toward the international community to create a Macedonia that will suit the (ethnic) Albanians," the prime minister was quoted as saying on state television.

In a move likely to rile the Macedonian Slavs, Georgievski also said the Macedonian Orthodox Church could be "wiped out" of the constitution.

"Macedonian has been at war for three months now," he said. "Who wants to go on waging this war."

Trajkovski, meanwhile, outlined his amnesty offer in a letter to NATO officials in Brussels, said his presidential adviser, Nikola Dimitrov.

The plan reportedly entails demilitarising rebel fighters and then trying to reinsert them into civil society.

A special corridor would be established through which demilitarised insurgents would be allowed to pass into Kosovo, from where the government believes most of the fighters originally came.

"We heard some interesting suggestions for a cessation of hostilities," Arben Xhaferi, the main ethnic Albanian leader said after meeting with Trajkovski, in remarks carried by AP.

"We should discuss it with those who are waging the war. It depends on them whether the war will stop."

The government, comprised mostly of ethnic Slavs, has so far refused to negotiate directly with the rebels, whom it considers terrorists.

But Albanian politicians participating in a fragile "national government" designed to find a resolution to the conflict insist the militants must be given a voice in any mediation effort.