SKOPJE, Macedonia (Islamweb & News Agencies) - NATO has won the agreement of the Slav-dominated Macedonian government forces and ethnic Albanian fighters to reinstate a cease-fire shattered by three days of fighting, diplomatic sources said late on Wednesday.Under the deal, brokered by NATO special envoy Pieter Feith, the National Liberation Army (NLA) fighters would retreat from territory they have occupied since the truce took effect on July 6. This would allow displaced Macedonian villagers to return.
``It was made clear to them (the NLA) that they were derailing a political process which they say they support,'' the diplomatic source said.
The government was presented with the NLA agreement and in return said its forces would exercise restraint around the volatile, mainly ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo, he added. The deal had been signed by the chiefs of the Macedonian police and army.
No further details of the deal were immediately available. Macedonians who say they were expelled from villages seized by the NLA on a road from Tetovo toward the Kosovo border staged a protest rally in downtown Skopje on Tuesday that degenerated into anti-Western riots.
An ethnic Albanian steps through window from a house damaged in the latest fighting between the Slave-dominated Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian fighters in the village of Poroj near Tetovo west of Skopje July 25, 2001. Ethnic Albanian fighters showed no signs of withdrawing from a road above the flashpoint Macedonian town of Tetovo, despite threats of an assault by government forces and riots in Skopje. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)