A duo with a coxswain

After last week's offensive by the Macedonian security forces in Aračinovo and in the Karadac-Kumanova region, when it seemed that the Macedonian political, military, and even the church leadership had finally decided on a military solution to the crisis, these days officially Skopje, under pressure from the West, is once again returning to the option of dialogue, and politicians from the always opposed VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM compete in who will be the greater peacemaker. This situation also led to comic scenes, such as the one where Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškovski (VMRO-DPMNE) ordered the complete demobilization of the reserve police force only because SDSM leader Branko Crvenkovski insulted him by claiming to represent the military solution to the crisis. The next day, President Boris Trajkovski invited the "offended minister" for a conversation, after which Boškovski withdrew the decision on demobilization. The "we were joking" policy is, therefore, still a regular phenomenon in the "execution" of government in the Balkans, according to the old rule: the more serious the situation, the more "we were joking" politics.

The daily quarrels of representatives of VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM are dominated by mutual accusations about the failed "coup", that is, about who was the organizer of the protest in front of the Assembly of Macedonia, when a group of reservists and citizens forcibly entered the parliament. In the barrage of accusations, arguments from both sides are presented that, to put it mildly, "do not hold water", because the participants of the protest showed that they are not satisfied with the policies of the entire Macedonian political leadership.

MALO I O TO THE MAJORITY: The protests in front of the Assembly, regardless of the destructiveness manifested, according to some analysts in Skopje, also had a positive side, because they showed the world that there is a side in Macedonia that can be dissatisfied, and sent a clear message to the West that the Macedonian majority should be taken into account. and not only about the Albanian minority. The first Westerner to understand this message was the French constitutional law expert Robert Badenter.

"The consensual democracy represented by the representatives of the Albanian political parties is not functional and can turn into the oppression of the majority by the minority." Any change to the Constitution of Macedonia should go in the direction of expanding the competence of local self-government, and not in the direction of some kind of consensual democracy or federalization of the country," said the well-known ex-Yugoslavs Robert Badenter in Skopje. Representatives of the Albanian political parties were quick to say that Badenter's opinion was not so important because his visit to the Macedonian capital was of a private nature.

The decision of American President George Bush to publish a "black list" of the leaders of various Albanian paramilitary formations from Macedonia, southern Serbia and Kosovo, whose accounts will be blocked and entry to the United States prohibited, was not interpreted in Skopje as a reward to Macedonia but to Serbia for the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic The Hague Tribunal; however, more optimistic analysts believe that the "black list" is a sign that official Washington has finally realized that one should not insist too much on the rights of an ethnic group and that the United States has given clear support to Macedonia.

"It's not true, it can't be true... This must be a mistake of the American administration," one of the ONA leaders, Fazli Veliu, said just a few hours after the publication of the "blacklist" for the independent German agency DPA.

Badenter and Bush undoubtedly made a great contribution to calming the frustrations of the Macedonians, who felt day by day that the pat on the back by the West only accelerates the decline into the quicksand of civil war and the definitive division of the country along ethnic lines.

Analysts interpret the arrival in Skopje of the newly appointed representatives of the United States and the European Union in Macedonia, James Perdue and Francois Leotar, as a signal that the US will take the main role in solving the Macedonian crisis, because unlike Leotar, who is considered a layman when it comes to the political problems of the Balkans , Perdue is one of the most experienced American experts on Balkan issues, who has already demonstrated his abilities in solving the crisis in southern Serbia. In anticipation of an agreement on the rights of Albanians in Macedonia and the establishment of a permanent truce, around 3000 NATO soldiers from 15 countries, who have already received the green light from the command in Brussels, are preparing for an operation to disarm members of the National Liberation Army.

DIPLOMACY I WEAPON: "The action of NATO forces does not aim at demarcation along ethnic lines, but at the voluntary surrender of weapons by terrorists," NATO spokesman Yves Broder said. The action, according to announcements by Alliance officials, will last a maximum of one month.

However, the Macedonian political elite started to get a headache from the increasingly frequent demands of high representatives of the European Union, including Lord Russell Johnson, that ONA members should join the political life of the country after laying down their arms. Such demands are difficult to push through to the Macedonian public, especially due to the fact that so far all Macedonian politicians have declared that there will be no negotiations with terrorists.

And while the West's diplomatic initiative to resolve the crisis continues, clashes between Macedonian security forces and Albanian terrorists continue. The truce is more or less respected in the Karadakh-Kumanova region, but the conflicts on the Šar mountain not only do not subside, but also show signs of expanding towards the Jažinca border crossing towards Kosovo. Conflicts in the area of ​​the villages of Raduša and Rašče near Skopje are also becoming more frequent. These conflicts are of particular concern to the people of Skopje, because near the village of Rasce there is a source that supplies the Macedonian capital with drinking water. The authorities claim that the source is safe and cannot fall into the hands of terrorists, but citizens remember well that the authorities made the same claim about Aračinovo only two days before it fell under the control of terrorists. This is precisely why selling plastic barrels and canisters is one of the most lucrative businesses in Skopje these days.