Balkan neighbours face 'taboo' topic

Operation Essential Harvest troops attached to NATO begin to pull out of Macedonia

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Government sources in Tirana have denied a claim by Macedonian Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski that rebel guerrillas "who terrorised" his country had trained at camps in Albania.

During a one-day visit to Albania on Sunday, Buckovski met his Albanian counterpart Pandeli Majko and was due to see Prime Minister Ilir Meta and Foreign Minister Arta Dade to discuss improving security along the porous border.

Majko rejected allegations that Albania had been used to train guerrillas who waged a seven-month insurgency in Macedonia.

"We discussed topics that up to now have been a taboo, such as the case of training camps in which terrorists who terrorised our country were trained," Buckovski told a news conference in Tirana.

"In concrete terms, our media reported about camps in Kukes, Tropoje and Bajram Curri," he said, naming several towns in the sometimes lawless northeast of Albania.

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Buckovski said he had agreed with Majko that assessments would be based only on facts -- "what could be seen with one's own eyes."

Majko told the same news conference: "I am authorised to say that there are not any kind of training camps in Albania. But we, Albania and its armed forces, are ready to accept any kind of investigation into the so-called terrorist training camps."

Macedonia has previously accused Albania of allowing gun-running from its territory across the border to the guerrillas, a charge Tirana has denied.

During Sunday, NATO continued to pull out the 4,500 troops it had deployed in Macedonia for the weapons-collection mission while.

As the troops withdrew, a German-led follow-up mission was being set up to provide security to civilian peace monitors.

More than 150 civilian monitors -- protected by up to 1,000 NATO troops - are being deployed across Macedonia to check on progress in fulfilling the peace plan signed in August.

Meanwhile, scattered gunfire was heard through Macedonia's volatile northwest on Sunday in an area the government has said it intends to eventually retake from ethnic Albanian rebels, the Associated Press reported.

No one was injured as about 50 rounds were fired in the air.

Last week, a NATO mission collected more than 3,000 rebel weapons, mostly in the same area of Sunday's gunfire.

On Saturday, Macedonia's government promised to use restraint in retaking any territory and wait until other provisions of the peace accord are fulfilled, notably its own obligation to carry out legal reforms granting broader rights to the restive ethnic Albanian community, which accounts for nearly a third of Macedonia's two million people.