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Macedonia-Kosovo Border Reopens
Carrying bags and bundles, hundreds of ethnic Albanians streamed across the Macedonia-Kosovo frontier Tuesday after authorities reopened a main border crossing that had been closed for nearly a month by fighting.
As lines of cars backed up on both sides of the Blace crossing, about 6 miles north of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, Macedonian paramilitary police opened car trunks and peered under seats. They said they were under orders to search every vehicle for weapons or contraband.
The reopening of the border, which had been closed for the last 25 days to all but military traffic and those with special permission, was the latest in a series of steps by the government to assert a return to normalcy after last week's army offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels.
The army reported no exchanges of fire overnight. Except for small skirmishes Saturday and Monday, an army spokesman described the past several days as the longest period of calm since guerrillas and Macedonia's military began their faceoff six weeks ago.
Other than mine-clearing operations in the steep hills overlooking the town of Tetovo, the scene of last week's army campaign to push the rebels from strongholds, there were no military operations in progress, said spokesman Blagoja Markovski.
The fighting in Macedonia has been small in scale thus far, but many observers fear it could widen into another Balkan war. Macedonia gained independence a decade ago, the only former Yugoslav republic to do so peacefully
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