A Diplomatic Race Against Disaster.(Macedonia and the European Union)(Brief Article)

The western diplomats who stalk the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia these days are mostly veteran Balkans hands. On their watch, in other parts of the region, one republic after another dissolved into ethnic violence and war. Many of them believe that forceful, early international intervention might have averted the last decade's bloodletting. This time they're determined to try to get it right. At first European officials cautiously suggested speeding up Macedonia's integration into the European Union, or its membership in NATO's Partnership for Peace. "That was a 10-year plan," scoffed an American diplomat. "We needed a 10-day plan." Meeting almost daily for the past six weeks, American and European diplomats in Skopje put together a scheme to avert civil war, and persuaded Macedonia to adopt it. "If you consider that the fighting only started March 25, it hasn't taken much time at all," said Robert H. Frowick, special envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. By comparison, when Frowick headed the OSCE's mission to Bosnia, it took a year just for the Western countries to agree on how to implement the Dayton peace accords.

Former NATO secretary-general Javier Solana was back on the scene as the West's point man, this time as the EU's special envoy. After a marathon 10-hour meeting with all the country's political leaders last Monday, he sold them on the diplomats' plan for a government of national unity--which they agreed to Friday. The government divided ministries among all four major parties, two Albanian and two Macedonian, and committed itself to a program of accelerated reforms that had long been demanded by the Albanian minority. "It gives everybody cover," said one diplomat. And it isolates Albanian guerrillas who are running an insurgency that is gaining momentum.

If the plan fails, it may well be because of what happens in the basements of a village called Slupcane. Hot in pursuit of Albanian fighters from the National Liberation Army, the Macedonian Army ordered the evacuation May 4 of 10 villages in a 20-mile-long swath of mountainous countryside near the Kosovo border. But in Slupcane and Vasince, nearly the entire population refused to leave, taking refuge in basements. Macedonia said the remaining civilians were being held by the NLA as "human shields"; the NLA insisted it was protecting them from heavy-handed Macedonian forces.

There was plenty of evidence for both positions. Either way, one well- placed shell would greatly ratchet up the stakes in a conflict that so far has had low casualties. "This is a catastrophe," said Buram Sadiku, a 38-year-old whose family was among 43 people sharing three underground rooms. Babies wailed, and the only light was from a single candle. "We can't stay and we won't go."

On ...