Macedonia's defence minister met ethnic Albanians inside guerrilla territory today in a confidence-building gesture to bolster a proposed peace deal.
In talks with Tearce's ethnic Albanian mayor, Defence Minister Mr Vlado Buckovski elaborated a plan in which displaced people would start to return home on September 27th in the company of international monitors.
He was accompanied by officials from NATO, whose troops are collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian guerrillas.
Local ethnic Albanians said Mr Buckovski's trip across truce lines would advance the cause of reconciliation.
"We are here to determine whether there's still some rapport after all the things that have happened...What I have seen in Tearce convinces me that ordinary citizens have more common sense than our politicians," Mr Buckovski said.
Tearce was an ethnically mixed place before the fighting, with 2,200 Albanians, 1,300 Macedonians, 500 Turks and 100 Roma. All but 100 of the Macedonians fled to government-held cities to the south during the seven-month conflict.
The reform process has been plagued by delays orchestrated by hardline Macedonian nationalists. Legislators are tomorrow due to discuss demands for a referendum that NATO officials say would probably shoot down the peace pact and provoke guerrillas to rearm.