The NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, said yesterday that separate ceasefire agreements with the Macedonian government and Albanian guerrillas had brought the country back from the brink of war.
"The people of Macedonia are united and the leaders are getting together and are pulling their country back from the precipice of civil war and that must be good news for all," he said at a Ukraine-NATO conference in Kiev.
He was speaking after the Macedonian government said it had agreed to the NATO-brokered ceasefire, which came into force one minute after midnight, the latest in a series of truces during a five month-old revolt by ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
But just hours before the truce was due to take effect six civilians were hurt in heavy fighting between Macedonian forces and the guerrillas on the edge of the country's main Albanian city, Tetovo. There was also an unconfirmed report last night that rebels had shot down a Macedonian helicopter gunship.
The director of Tetovo's hospital said eight people had been brought in suffering from gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
The army said it was bombarding guerrilla positions on the outskirts of Tetovo, responding to heavy rebel fire in what appeared to be a battle for territory before the midnight start of the ceasefire.
NATO has offered to send troops into Macedonia once a durable ceasefire has been established and Lord Robertson reiterated that no date had been set for any such action.
In Skopje, the Macedonian Defence Minister, Mr Vlado Buckovski, said that the NATO representative, Mr Pieter Feith, had "reached a ceasefire accord with Ali Ahmeti", political representative of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA). Mr Ahmeti "has guaranteed that he has an absolute control" over the guerrillas operating in Macedonia, Mr Buckovski said.
An NLA spokesman said the rebels had agreed to a "durable ceasefire, until the peaceful solution of the conflict".
Following the accord with the rebels, the Macedonian army chief and the police commander signed a similar accord with Mr Feith yesterday in Skopje.
The accords would pave the way for a deployment of NATO troops in Macedonia, which would supervise disarmament of the guerrillas, Mr Buckovski said.
The EU and US envoys for Macedonia, Mr Francois Leotard and Mr James Pardew, welcomed the ceasefire, describing it as an "important step towards a political solution".
The announcement came a day after President Boris Trajkovski declared that leaders of the two sides had reached a breakthrough agreement to discuss constitutional changes in an effort to stem an escalating Albanian uprising. A previous ceasefire was announced on June 24th by the EU's chief foreign policy official, Mr Javier Solana, but has been broken almost daily, with both sides exchanging accusations of violations.
"This accord preserves the unitary character of the state," said Mr Trajkovski, who had earlier broken off talks, accusing the rebels of trying to split Macedonia into two federal units based on ethnicity.