Macedonia makes peace progress

The sister of the soldier killed on Tuesday weeps at his funeral

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Macedonian leaders say they have agreed to base their search for a peace deal on proposals made by a French constitutional expert.

President Boris Trajkovski said on Wednesday: "We have reached a significant deal which should give a fast advancement of the process," Reuters reported. He added that the French blueprint, which excludes the most radical Albanian demands, would form the basis for future debate.

Politicians from Macedonia's divided ethnic groups resumed stalled peace talks on Tuesday and appear to have negotiated one major obstacle: demands by the Albanian minority for veto rights on key government decisions, Reuters reported.

Advancements in negotiations came amid continued fighting. A soldier was killed on Tuesday when ethnic Albanian rebels ambushed a patrol near the capital, Skopje, bringing the number of soldiers killed in the insurgency to 34, an army spokesman told the Associated Press.

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Diplomats said the veto issue -- put forward by Albanian guerrillas as terms for ending the four-month-old rebellion -- looked to have been a bargaining ploy that was dropped under heavy Western pressure.

U.S. and European Union envoys began talks with Macedonian politicians over the weekend to try to forge a peace agreement to prevent the conflict erupting into civil war.

Parties representing the minority Albanians denied they had caved in and said they would push for more guarantees to protect their rights than former French Justice Minister Robert Badinter's plan contained.

Aziz Pollozhani, Vice-President of the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity, said: "His approach is based on treating Albanians as a minority in Macedonia, not as a equal community," Reuters reported.

Leaders of the Macedonian majority agree Badinter's plan is just a framework and additional issues will have to be addressed.

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)

"The ideas are generally only a starting point," a government source said. "We are not yet at the phase where we have agreed on separate issues because then the talks would be over. We'll use his ideas but we will go issue by issue."

At stake is the official status of Albanians in Macedonia.

The minority argues it is discriminated against in all walks of life and wants to be defined as one of the tiny Balkan state's founding ethnic groups. The government says the rebels are "terrorists" intent on breaking up the country.

Trajkovski said Wednesday's agreement -- unveiled in front of U.S. special adviser James Pardew and his EU counterpart, Francois Leotard -- should accelerate progress towards a deal, including a lasting truce and disarming rebels with NATO help.

"I have no doubt that in the future we will still be faced with armed provocations from those who are against peace but I can assure you that we, jointly with the international community, are strongly committed to going down this route," Trajkovski added.

Fighting continued on Wednesday with shelling of rebel positions in the mountains above the mainly Albanian town of Tetovo, where the guerrilla National Liberation Army (NLA) seized new territory at the weekend. The NLA returned gunfire.

Sporadic exchanges were also audible from the direction of Radusa, a village attacked by army helicopter gunships for the past three days.