Macedonia peace talks break down

Trajkovski drafted a peace proposal

SKOPJE, Macedonia (CNN) -- Efforts to avert a civil war in Macedonia appear to be faltering following the breakdown of peace talks between Slavic and ethnic Albanian leaders.

Violence has erupted again between government forces and rebels. Two civilians were reported killed on Wednesday as the Macedonian army shelled a village held by the rebels.

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski said negotiations had ended because ethnic-Albanian demands were too radical to allow a deal.

Other government officials told CNN that the ethnic Albanians were unwilling to compromise.

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But rebel commanders of the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army, who are holding several villages just outside Skopje, told CNN their demands were not too radical.

They said they were same demands that ethnic Albanians had been making for the past 10 years -- for equality in terms of education, employment, and language.

If the government is unwilling to make a deal, the rebel commanders are willing to continue fighting, they said.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is heading to Macedonia to try to break the deadlock and restart talks.

In an interview with CNN, Solana confirmed that he would return to Macedonia, and expressed confidence that an agreement could be reached.

"The position that has to be found ... after the negotiations has to be the possibility of having a country in which both parties ... do feel comfortable living together.

"This is the aim of the international community, it is the aim of the European Union, and to that end we are going to do all our efforts," he said.

Albanian politicians say Solana's presence should get them back to the negotiating table.

The European Union has imposed a deadline of Monday by which time it wants to see substantial progress being made in producing a viable plan to end the violence.

Meanwhile in Brussels, NATO announced it has ordered its military planners to come up a plan for a military force to collect weapons if there is a peace agreement between the two sides.

NATO said the plan was a contingency, and that troops would be sent to Macedonia "only in the event of an agreement between the government and the various parties."

The planned force would be "brigade size" and diplomatic sources said that meant probably between 2,000 and 3,000 troops.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson is in the United States. He will chair a meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Friday in Virginia. The contingency troop plan could be discussed at that time, observers said.

President Trajkovski said on Wednesday: "Unfortunately the talks are totally blocked, mostly because of the radical change of the positions of PDP and DPA (two main ethnic Albanian parties).

"I can only conclude that they (Albanians) don't honestly intend to go with this process. They only wanted to prolong the talks, hoping maybe for international intervention."

Politicians on all sides were studying a peace proposal drafted by Trajkovski which calls for a ceasefire in hostilities between armed ethnic Albanian rebels and Macedonian security forces in the north of the country, an amnesty for rebels who disarm voluntarily, and inclusion of minority ethnic Albanians in state bodies and institutions.

The removal of references to ethnicity or religion from the constitution and adding Albanian as a state language were also on the table.

The peace talks resumed on Saturday evening after two ethnic Albanian parties agreed on a common platform pushing for greater rights for ethnic Albanians.

The ethnic Albanian programme addresses issues such as language and equality and sets out proposed changes in Macedonia's constitution.

Party leaders say these issues represent the concerns of rebel groups that have taken up arms against the government.

Rebels in the northern hills say they are fighting for greater rights for ethnic Albanians but the government accuses them of seeking to grab land and split the state. The rebel groups were not represented in the talks.

Ethnic Albanians make up between a quarter and a third of the population in the majority Slav country.