SKOPJE (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Macedonia's nationalist prime minister Ljubco Georgievski has blasted a NATO-backed peace plan but called on parliament to ratify the blueprint because the small Balkan state could not afford to defy the West.Georgievski spoke out in a key parliamentary debate on the peace plan on Monday evening, after a day dominated by the issue of whether NATO forces may have to remain in Macedonia after their current 30-day mandate expires later this month.(Read photo caption below)
The prime minister claimed the peace plan rewarded ``military aggression'' by ethnic Albanian fighters, who launched an armed revolt for equal rights in February which brought the former Yugoslav republic to the brink of civil war.
But he said Macedonia, one of the poorer parts of the old Yugoslavia, faced a military and economic embargo which would be catastrophic if it did not support the peace plan.
The plan foresees changes to the constitution and other measures to give more rights to Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority. The package includes greater official use of their language and more jobs for Albanians in the police force.
Western officials insist the plan simply enshrines modern European minority rights standards in Macedonia.
But some privately acknowledge part of the Albanian fighters' agenda had to be tackled because they were too strong to be defeated militarily by Macedonia's state security forces, widely regarded by Western analysts as poorly equipped and trained.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Speaker of the Parliament Stojan Andov holds his forehead as he waits for Macedonian MP's to arrive for a Parliament session in Skopje September 3, 2001. Macedonia's parliament resumed debating a peace plan Western powers see as vital to averting civil war in the former Yugoslav republic. (Peter Andrews/Reuters)