Macedonia talks due to resume

U.S. envoy James Pardew (right) and EU envoy Francois Leotard (left) talk with Robertson in Skopje

SKOPJE, Macedonia (CNN) -- Senior Western and Macedonian officials are due to resume talks aimed at agreeing a solution to Macedonia's ethnic Albanian insurgency.

The new round of talks is to take place in Tetovo -- scene of some of the conflict's heaviest fighting -- after Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian leaders were persuaded back to the negotiating table.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson and the European Union's foreign affairs chief Javier Solana announced the breakthrough on Thursday.

Ethnic Albanian fighters have started withdrawing from territory they had seized near Tetovo as part a NATO-brokered truce.

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But government officials are not clear whether the rebels have pulled back to the July 5 cease-fire line -- a condition it had imposed for restarting stalled peace talks.

There has been a suspicion in Macedonian government circles that the Western negotiators were biased towards the Albanian case.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski was very critical of NATO last week calling it "a friend of the enemy (rebels)," which in part set off rioting in Skopje earlier this week.

President Boris Trajkovski reiterated his support for NATO and the international negotiators on Thursday saying: "They are our friends."

The breakthrough in negotiations came after several days of fierce fighting around Tetovo that shattered a shaky cease-fire.

"I want to underline that the political process is back on track ... the cease-fire is back on track," Solana said on Thursday.

He described the two sides as close to being able to reach an agreement that would head off a civil war.

Robertson and Solana went into talks earlier with the Albanian leaders. The talks followed meetings with Trajkovski and other Macedonian leaders.

The Macedonian Interior Ministry also said on Thursday it was issuing new arrest warrants against 13 ethnic Albanian leaders, charging them with war crimes.

Diplomats observing the rebel withdrawal said they had pulled back from at least two of five villages they had occupied in northern Macedonia in recent days.

Among the sticking points still remaining in the negotiations between political leaders are language and the composition of local police forces.

The Albanians have been pressing for Albanian to be declared the country's second language and to have it used in communities where 20 percent or more of the citizens speak Albanian.

The other demand is to have Albanians included on local police forces.

The commander of rebels on a road outside Tetovo said on Thursday his forces had retreated.

"We respect the agreement, we have pulled back from the road," Commandant Leka, a 35-year-old veteran of rebel campaigns in neighbouring Kosovo, told Reuters.

The retreat would allow displaced Macedonian villagers, who took part in violent anti-Western protests in the capital Skopje on Tuesday night, to return.

For a third day, there were no reports of heavy fighting between government troops and the rebels.