EU envoy seeks Macedonian peace

Leotard: Mission got off to a rocky start

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- The European Union's new envoy for Macedonia is trying to stitch a peace plan back together amid increasing anti-Western sentiment.

Former French defence minister Francois Leotard's first challenge in finding a peaceful solution to the nation's four-month-old ethnic Albanian rebel insurgency will be to restore the majority Slav population's confidence in the international community.

CNN's Nic Robertson in Macedonia says such confidence has plummeted in recent days after NATO peacekeepers extricated 300 ethnic Albanian rebels from the besieged village of Aracinovo.

The intervention triggered riots by Macedonian Slavs outraged that Western forces had taken part in what they saw as a rescue of rebel forces.

VIDEO CNN's Nick Robertson reports on President Trajkovski's struggle to maintain control in Macedonia (June 26) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Leotard, acting as EU security chief Javier Solana's personal envoy, will now attempt to jump-start peace talks that broke down after fighting last week.

But his mission, launched on Thursday, got off to a rocky start after he was quoted from France as saying Macedonian officials should negotiate with the ethnic Albanians.

In comments to local television he emphasised that the rebels should not be included.

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"The only people with whom I will talk are the legitimate party leaders," Leotard told Macedonian private A-1 television, in comments quoted by the Associated Press.

Ethnic Albanian rebels have been fighting since February for what they say are greater rights for the ethnic Albanian community -- which makes up between a quarter and a third of the population.

The Macedonian government however accuses the rebels of seeking to grab land and split the state.

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The fighting in the north of the country has since thousands of ethnic Albanians fleeing the area, many making their way to the neighbouring NATO-controlled province of Kosovo.

With growing international pressure on the Macedonian government to solve the crisis, President Boris Trajkovski has praised U.S. efforts to choke off funds to ethnic Albanian rebels -- a move he claimed indicated that the militants were at fault for the bloodshed.

"I honestly hope that the world will recognise the root of the crisis in Macedonia," the AP quoted Trajkovski saying.

He was lauding moves by U.S. President George W. Bush that bar Americans from any transactions involving the property of known rebel leaders and restricted their entry to the United States.

Singling out Germany, Belgium and Switzerland as countries used by rebel movement organisers as safe havens for their accounts, Trajkovski and other officials appealed to European leaders to follow Bush's lead.

But some Western officials have expressed some exasperation with Macedonian officials.

In comments published on Thursday and quoted by AP, Peter Feith, NATO special envoy to Macedonia, told the Dutch paper Allegemine Dagblad that although Trajkovski is "ready to seek a peaceful solution ... many ministers in his government think that a military solution can be imposed."

"The problem is the Macedonian government," he said.

A previous envoy who tried to bring the rebels into the peace process, U.S. diplomat Robert Frowick from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, left Macedonia last month without finding a breakthrough.