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NATO, EU Upbeat on Macedonian Ceasefire
NATO and the European Union (EU) said Friday that a tentative ceasefire in Macedonia seemed to be holding and welcomed steps toward a peaceful solution in the former Yugoslav republic.
"There is more light at the end of the tunnel than there has been for some time," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said after meeting Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva.
"It's a major gain for the people of Macedonia and the wider region," he told reporters at the Brussels-based NATO headquarters.
Robertson stressed the need for a continued political dialogue and called on all parties to maintain the truce.
The EU's foreign affairs chief Javier Solana, who met Mitreva separately, said earlier he was confident the shaky truce would hold.
"I am a cautious optimist and always have been. I would like to underline those two words today, optimism and caution," he said at the EU's headquarters in Brussels.
Solana told reporters that Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski would later on Friday present a plan likely to form the basis of talks between politicians from the Macedonian Slav majority and the ethnic Albanian minority.
For 20 weeks Macedonian troops have been fighting the ethnic Albanian guerrilla National Liberation Army (NLA). The latter has said it would end its revolt if political reforms were agreed.
At odds is the official status of Albanians in Macedonia, some one-third of the population, who argue they are discriminated against and want to be defined as one of the tiny Balkan country's founding ethnic groups.
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