SKOPJE (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Macedonia's foreign minister has suggested tougher international action to help end an uprising by ethnic Albanian fighters, saying the fighters will never agree to a plan to hand arms to NATO troops.Macedonia's government declared Saturday a day of national mourning after seven Macedonian soldiers were killed in a land mine attack blamed on the Albanian fighters as surging violence pushed the Balkan nation closer to full-blown war.
Ten soldiers died in an Albanian ambush Wednesday, the bloodiest attack of the six-month Albanian revolt for equal rights. And five Albanians were shot dead in the capital Skopje Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva said the violence showed the Albanians would never accept a plan to disarm voluntarily even though leaders of the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties are to sign a peace plan Monday.
``This is an act of courage,'' she wrote in an open letter to the United Nations, NATO and the European Union. ``We expect the same virtue from the international community.
``It is natural to assume that following everything that has happened, the so-called NLA will not proceed with voluntary disarmament,'' she wrote. ``Perhaps this should be a sign for redesigning the process and plan for disarmament.''
NATO has said it will send up to 3,500 lightly armed soldiers once the peace plan is in place, an amnesty is agreed and the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army has pledged to hand over weapons voluntarily to alliance soldiers.
``Now is the moment for the international community to act energetically,'' Mitreva said. She did not spell out her suggestions but NATO nations have been highly reluctant to get involved in a third, robust Balkan peacekeeping mission.
STREET PROTESTS
Several hundred youths marched through the capital late on Friday to protest at the killings of the seven soldiers, waving Macedonian flags and shouting ``Albanians to the gas chambers.'' (Read photo caption below)
Some people smashed windows of a few shops in a suburb with metal bars. Riot police kept protesters, roaming in groups of several dozen, at bay and back from the U.S. embassy.
The violence fell well short of some recent riots spawned by Albanian attacks.
But the surging death toll has cast doubt on the planned signing of a peace deal in Skopje Monday to improve the rights of the one-third ethnic Albanian minority in everything from education to religion.
NATO said that Secretary General George Robertson had yet to decide whether to fly to Skopje to attend the ceremony.
But Macedonians in the government have a twin track of talking peace while keeping up a battering of the Albanians, who similarly continue attacks on the security forces while their politicians negotiate.
Albanian fighters and Slav soldiers clashed in northwestern Macedonia late Friday and several homes were set ablaze.
``There was intensive fire,'' an Albanian commander codenamed Leka said. Macedonia dropped bombs on villages Thursday from Sukhoi Su-25 jets in a serious escalation of the conflict.
A late-night meeting Friday of top Macedonian ministers resulted in a decision to continue action to ``destroy threats to the safety of citizens and the security forces.''
Television station A1 said that one issue under discussion at the security council had been possible ways of getting NATO to step its involvement in restoring Macedonia's security.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A police car parks behind garbage containers blocking the street after some three to four hundred Macedonians rioted in the suburbs of the capital Skopje, August 10, 2001. Warnings that Macedonia is on the brink of civil war came from all sides on Friday as army helicopter gunships pounded an ethnic Albanian village, in retaliation for a deadly mine attack on a military convoy in which seven soldiers were killed. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski
- Aug 10 6:16 PM ET