Tetovo, Macedonia — A group of ethnic Albanian guerrillas battling for control of a hillside overlooking this frightened provincial city said Friday that their sole aim is to win more economic and political rights alongside Macedonia's Slavic majority.
The Albanian rebels, who spoke while bullets whizzed nearby and mortar concussions shook the hillside where they were entrenched, specifically said they wanted the Macedonian government to provide adequate schools staffed with Albanian-speaking instructors. This is a longstanding demand from Macedonia's 35 percent ethnic Albanian minority, a demand the government has yet to address.
The guerrillas, who wore camouflage uniforms, were armed with rifles and carried the modern rebel's communications device a cell phone. In interviews, they said their armed violence was sparked by a decade of discrimination at the hands of the Macedonian Slavs who make up nearly two-thirds of the country's 2 million inhabitants, alongside tiny communities of Gypsies, Turks and Serbs.
"We will never give up," a guerrilla said.
Their statements seemed designed to counter charges from Macedonian and Yugoslav officials that the uprising here had been helped along by ethnic Albanians in the neighboring Serbian province of Kosovo, southern Serbia and Albania itself, united behind the goal of a greater Albanian super-state. This prospect has rattled Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Italy, all of which have demanded more Western action to guarantee Macedonia's unity.
But the rebellion here, which has been condemned by governments around the world, looked Friday like it could spread. Weapons fire was reported in a handful of other Macedonian towns and cities in addition to Tetovo, according to diplomatic and local sources. And a German member of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Kosovo was fired at by an unknown gunman while passing through Tetovo en route to the Kosovo border, according to the government.
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