Macedonia acts to stem violence

Macedonian forces patrol the flashpoint border with Kosovo

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Macedonia has sent reinforcements to its border with Kosovo after eight members of its security forces were killed.

Four policemen and four soldiers died on Saturday while carrying out a routine patrol near the village of Vejce in the northwest of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

"The situation is tense so we have strengthened police and army observation points," a police official told Reuters.

Presidential Chief of Cabinet Zoran Jolevski told CNN: "On the political side we have had big progress in the last few weeks. Things have been moving in a very good direction. What happened (just now) is very sad."

But a second senior police official told Reuters it had already been obvious that the peace of the past few weeks marked only a lull in the fighting rather than a permanent end to the conflict.

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"What did we expect, that we'd won and there would be no attacks?" the official, who declined to be named, said. He added there was concern more attacks might follow.

Six security force personnel were also reported wounded in the first incident since Macedonian security forces quelled a month-long uprising by ethnic Albanian separatists, driving them from hills in northern Macedonia in late March.

It is the highest death toll in a single attack since hostilities broke out a month before the crackdown.

Officials told Reuters the deaths occurred during an ambush on a joint Macedonian army and police patrol.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said: "I condemn the cowardly acts of the extremists and my message is simple: the violence must end and their tactics will not be successful."

Ali Ahmeti, the political leader of the National Liberation Army ethnic Albanian guerrilla force, told Reuters he was still collecting information on the incident but maintained his forces had not attacked.

"Most likely, our forces only resisted in self defence," he said.

Ethnic Albanian rebels and Macedonian troops have clashed since Macedonian Albanians began demanding greater civil rights in February.

Macedonia has won strong Western backing for its fight against the rebels, but it is also under international pressure to make concessions to ethnic Albanians.

Macedonian troops control Vejce village and the hills around it, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of Tetovo, the stronghold of Macedonia's ethnic Albanians.

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Government of Macedonia

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