Thousands of Albanians in Macedonia warned at a rally today that dividing Kosovo would have a knock-on effect across the Balkans and demanded independence for their ethnic kin in the breakaway Serbian province.
Around 5,000 attended the rally in the western city of Tetovo, the seat of a guerrilla insurgency in 2001 that sought better treatment for Macedonia's 25 per cent Albanian minority.
Kosovo's two million Albanians are losing patience with the diplomatic deadlock between the West and Russia over their demand for independence from Serbia, and NATO allies fear unrest would spread to Albanian areas of neighbouring Macedonia.
Some analysts still see dividing Kosovo in two, leaving the Serb-dominated north as part of Serbia, as a possible way out of the stalemate. Kosovo Albanian leaders reject partition, warning it would reignite fighting in Macedonia and in Serbia's southern Presevo Valley.
"We oppose the partition of Kosovo. We think it will have a domino effect in Macedonia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia," Macedonia's ethnic Albanian deputy prime minister, Imer Aliu, said.
Macedonia, an official candidate for membership of the European Union, was dragged from the brink of civil war in 2001 by a Western-brokered peace accord offering ethnic Albanians in the north and west greater rights.
After six months of fighting, the Albanian guerrilla army disbanded and entered government, but the ex-rebels warn they are ready to fight again if Kosovo is denied independence.
The province has been run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO since 1999 when a NATO bombing campaign forced Serbia to pull its troops out of Kosovo and halt the slaughter of Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.