TETOVO, Macedonia — The European Union's security chief on Tuesday reaffirmed his push for a peaceful solution to end Macedonia's ethnic Albanian insurgency, urging the rebels to let the political process run its course.
"You have to achieve a solution to these problems — not by weapons, but by negotiations, by participation in the political process. This is what Europe is all about," Javier Solana said after meeting with ethnic Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi.
Solana declined to comment on proposals put forth by Xhaferi, whose Democratic Albanian Party is a partner in the coalition government. But Xhaferi told reporters he would like the constitution to be changed to ensure a multiethnic state, proportional representation in political bodies and a new census.
Ethnic Albanians make up at least one-fourth of Macedonia's 2 million people, although they have argued that their numbers are actually much higher.
Xhaferi said it was time for Macedonia's ruling officials to make changes in the way the country was run to reflect the growing numbers of ethnic Albanians living there.
"We cannot change the reality. We cannot cleanse the territory," he said. "The only thing we can change is the concept of the state."
The guerrillas say they are fighting for greater rights and recognition for Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, accusing the Macedonian government of discrimination. The government, however, says the rebels are separatists seeking to split away northern Macedonia to create an independent state with mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo.
The former Yugoslav republic was quiet for a second day Tuesday, but in neighboring Kosovo, German KFOR troops said they were holding 30 suspected rebels intercepted in the mountains of the Serbian province.
Clashes erupted Tuesday near the town of Presevo in southern Serbia, where ethnic Albanian militants are fighting for a key road to Kosovo.
The government press center in Bujanovac said that ethnic Albanian insurgents fired mortars, rocket launchers and machineguns at a Serbian police checkpoint at Cerevajka, near Presevo. Fighting continued into the afternoon.
Meanwhile, some of the 30,000 Macedonians who fled from their homes this month because of fighting around Tetovo have started returning to the country's second-largest city, a U.N. official said Tuesday.
"Some of the displaced people are now seen going back to Tetovo," Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva. "There is an easing of tension in Tetovo, with shops opening up. Cars loaded with personal belongings were seen moving back from Skopje toward Tetovo."
It is uncertain how many people are involved, but "we're talking probably for the time being of hundreds," Janowski said. "Whether it will continue will depend on how the situation develops."
However, U.N. spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort reported that more than 1,300 refugees from Macedonia arrived in Kosovo Tuesday. Residents of the village of Selce, one of the rebel strongholds, said the entire town had decided to leave.
Solana's visit to Tetovo came a day after he met with President Boris Trajkovski and other top officials in the capital, Skopje. He was joined there Monday by NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, who underlined the Western alliance's basic support to the government while urging it to find a peaceful way to end the standoff.
"No one wants to see another Balkan blood bath," Robertson said.
An opposition ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia, the Democratic Prosperity Party, began boycotting parliament Monday. Party leader Imer Imeri demanded that Trajkovski end the army offensive and that the rebels lay down their arms.
After meeting with Solana and Robertson, Trajkovski suggested he was open to a political solution. "All citizens of Macedonia have the right to a better life, so we must start grassroot reforms," he said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, promised to reinforce NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo, from which guerrillas are said to smuggle weapons and fighters across the border into Macedonia.