The trouble with Macedonia

Great play was made with the "thanksgiving festival" held to mark the end of NATO's Essential Harvest arms collection exercise in Macedonia. Everyone praised everyone else, waving figurative incense around, and everyone was highly relieved that it had all gone ahead without major complications.

With the best of wishes the new, German-led NATO mission was sent back to Skopje, but now that the incense smoke has cleared, everyone can see clearly again what a mess Macedonia is in.

In military terms all is quiet once more. For the time being. It is quiet politically too, and that is ominous. The reform process that was embarked on simultaneously with Essential Harvest has ground almost to a halt.

The plan was for the constitutional changes agreed in the summer (or, more accurately, imposed by the West) and an amnesty for ethnic Albanian NLA rebels to be approved by the Macedonian parliament on Sept. 27. But there are no signs of that happening.

The Macedonian authorities are stalling for all they are worth on equal rights for Albanians. So it can be no more than a matter of time before the deathly political hush is superseded by fresh violence.

The country's hawks in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, led by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, are missing no opportunity of provoking the Albanians and snubbing Western mediators.

Incensed by their behavior, EU external-relations commissioner Chris Patten has called off a donor conference for Macedonia that was to have been held in mid-October.

That is only logical, given that no funds are to be provided without a tit for tat. Maybe EU and NATO leaders have finally realized that naivete is always punished in the Balkans.

-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany