Macedonian voters reject hardliners who wanted war

Macedonian voters have strongly endorsed the opposition Social Democrats in the first elections since the Balkan country was so nearly engulfed in civil war last year.

Yesterday's preliminary results spell the end for the hardline government of Ljubco Georgievski, which vowed to defeat an Albanian rebellion by force and failed.

Ali Ahmeti, the softly spoken Albanian rebel leader who only last year was holding court to journalists in the mountains in ill-fitting combat fatigues, is on the threshold of a ministerial post after his party dominated voting among the ethnic Albanian minority in Sunday's elections. The question that remained yesterday: will it make Macedonia safer?

Scores of people, including many children, were killed in fighting last year. For a few days in August, the fifth Balkans war in a decade had apparently begun. There was fighting on the edge of Skopje, Macedonia's capital. Huge swaths of territory were controlled by Mr Ahmeti's National Liberation Army (NLA), and Mr Georgiev-ski's government ordered air strikes against them.

Then Nato sent a peace-keeping force, led by Britain, and both sides backed away from what would have been a devastating war. Since then, overshadowed by the 11 September attacks and their repercussions, tensions have been simmering in Macedonia.

The election campaign was an ugly one. Peace-keepers had to talk Mr Ahmeti into calling off a rally in Skopje, in case it caused fighting in the ethnically divided city. One candidate had a broken bottle held to his throat at another rally.

Yesterday's results showed Mr Ahmeti's Union for Democratic Integration (DUI) gained two thirds of the ethnic Albanian vote, eclipsing two older, more moderate Albanian parties. Voters kicked out Mr Georgievski's VMRO party in favour of the more moderate Social Democratic Union of Branko Crvenkovski. Mr Crvenkovski, less jingoistic and more prepared to compromise in peace talks last year, is likely to become Prime Minister, after his party polled twice as many votes as VMRO.

Any government he forms may have to include Mr Ahmeti and his party, now the largest in parliament. But Ljube Boskovski, the outgoing ultra-hardline interior minister, has put out a warrant for Mr Ahmeti's arrest for war crimes, and has threatened to have him seized if he sets foot in Skopje. Yet if Mr Ahmeti's party is excluded from government, there are fears that his disbanded NLA guerrillas might come out of retirement to restart the fighting.

Mr Boskovski is among the most prominent losers. An exponent of defeating the NLA on the battlefield, he opposed any peace deal, and has been the subject of inquiries by the Hague Tribunal over alleged war crimes. He was filmed in the village of Ljuboten last year on the day members of his police units executed six unarmed Albanian civilians, human rights investigators said.

The former interior minister had founded irregular elite police units, now officially disbanded, though some are said to be still active, and he was accused of connections with Macedonian paramilitary groups last year.

Organised crime is said to be on the rise and police have found it hard to reassert their authority in formerly rebel-held areas where there have been a string of murders.