Refugees return home to Macedonia

Protesters in Skopje call for the right for Macedonians to be able to return to their homes

TEARCE, Macedonia -- Macedonia says those civilians who fled ethnic-Albanian populated regions because of real or feared violence will be allowed to return to their homes this week.

Macedonian Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski said the homecomings should begin Tuesday when residents return to the village of Tearce.

Residents of Lesok and Neprosteno, two other villages in the area, would follow, Buckovski said in Tearce.

Some 120,000 people -- both Macedonians and ethnic Albanians -- were driven from their homes by the violence sparked when the rebels took up arms in February, demanding broader rights for the large ethnic Albanian minority.

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Tearce is in an area north of the mostly ethnic Albanian city of Tetovo that was plagued by repeated clashes during the six-month insurrection by ethnic Albanian rebels.

Buckovski said police stations that were abandoned during the conflict would also be staffed -- but with proportional ethnic Albanian representation in the police forces, as agreed in the Western-backed peace accord meant to permanently end the ethnic violence in Macedonia.

"Albanians must be part of our police forces," Buckovski told the Associated Press.

He said all security forces, including military troops, would return to their bases by the end of the month.

U.N. refugee officials said last week that some 30,000 ethnic Albanians had returned to their homes since violence ebbed with the signing of a cease-fire last month, but many Macedonians still feared coming back.

At least a third of the country's two million residents are ethnic Albanians.

NATO troops are on schedule in their mission, having gathered about two-thirds of the 3,300 weapons the rebels have agreed to surrender under the peace deal.

The government on Saturday proposed that NATO keep some troops in the troubled Balkan country after the scheduled end of its weapons-collecting mission, officials said.

Macedonia suggested about 350 troops remain to protect monitors who will assess the situation after the 4,700 troops in Operation Essential Harvest end their mission on September 26.

Buckovski said the presence of NATO troops and civilian monitors from abroad would help the government establish order peacefully.

He said he hoped that all people driven from their homes by violence or fear could return home by around the end of September, and that police forces would be in place in all villages across the country -- together with international monitors.