Macedonia's main parties - including leaders of the Albanian minority - are close to agreeing to form a coalition government of national unity in a bid to quell rebel fighting, Prime Minister Mr Ljubco Georgievski said early today.
|
"We are agreed on 90 per cent of the contentious issues concerning the composition of a new government," Mr Georgievski said on private television Kanal 5.
He declared himself "convinced that an agreement will be reached", hopefully after talks resume today.
The Macedonian political leaders have come under increased international pressure to find a peaceful way out of the crisis.
Macedonia is a country "on the brink of real trouble" as it struggles to crush an ethnic Albanian rebellion, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson warned yesterday as the West urged Skopje not to take the drastic step of declaring a state of war.
"Our message is that the people of this country must pull back from the brink before further disaster which will hit everybody," he said after meeting President Boris Trajkovski, Prime Minister Mr Georgievski and political party leaders.
As Macedonian tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships intensified their bombardment of guerrilla positions in hills just 25 km north of Skopje, Lord Robertson called the gunmen a "bunch of murderers".
AFP