EU, US 'Support' for Macedonian Police Action

At the moment there is nothing that would suggest a possible destabilization of the country, so parallels with the armed conflict from 2001 should not be drawn, the diplomats said for A1 TV. These are strictly criminal activities and not related to the issue of ethnic conflict, they said.

On Wednesday Macedonian police reported that officers killed four armed and uniformed men who were smuggling a large quantity of weapons in a van traveling from Kosovo to Macedonia. The incident took place Tuesday night near the village of Radusha in relative proximity to the border with Kosovo.

Police unveiled the identity of the fourth member of the group that was killed on Tuesday night: Macedonian resident Harun Aliu, who was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for killing a police officer in 2008 in Skopje.

The other three persons were identified yesterday. The police said one of them was a citizen of Kosovo and that all of them were known to police previously for their alleged involvement in illegal activities.

US Ambassador to Skopje Philip Reeker yesterday also reacted to the incident, expressing his support for the police action and condemning those who promote violence. He defined the armed group as armed criminals who obviously planned acts of violence against the citizens of Macedonia.

The latest police intervention comes only two weeks after another incident in the same area. In late April police clashed with an armed group near the village of Blace on the border with Kosovo. Some members of the group, which was guarding a large weapons stash that was seized by the authorities, fled the scene.

The incidents raised concern about a possible renewal of instability in the country, with some observers recalling the 2001 armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and state security forces.

That conflict ended the same year with the signing of the Ohrid Peace Accord. The leaders of the ethnic Albanian group became politicians and formed the biggest ethnic Albanian political party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, now part of the ruling coalition.

Macedonian Deputy Interior Minister Emil Dimitrievski reiterated today what Minister of Police Gordana Jankulovska stated yesterday, namely that the police have the situation under control and that there is no reason for panic.

Meanwhile, analysts in the country debated the intentions of the group killed and the risk posed to the country.

“The real question is not who controls the security situation in the country but who creates it. If we have a bad situation being created, what is the point of it being controlled?” the editor of Dnevnik daily wrote in her Thursday column.

Katerina Blazevska argued that radical groups might reappear as a result of the failure of the country's politicians to create better living conditions in these areas. She expressed concern that the police action might provoke retaliation and another incident.

Commenting on that possibility, political analyst Albert Musliu argued for the same newspaper: “If you follow the logic of events from previous years it is clear that there might be retaliation. These kinds of groups do that often.”