Macedonian police defused a handmade bomb near a railway track and local hospital in the capital Skopje today, authorities said.
They said the incident was serious because of what they called threats by ethnic Albanian guerrillas to launch urban terrorism if talks on granting Macedonia's minority Albanians more rights fail.
Macedonian security forces drove out ethnic Albanian rebels from their strongholds in the hills of northern Macedonia near the border with Kosovo in late March.
But the rebels denied they had been defeated and vowed to take up arms again if political negotiations to give Macedonia's Albanians equal status with the majority Slavs do not succeed.
A police statement said the explosive was found by residents in a plastic bag in the densely populated Kisela Voda district a few metres from the railway line and the local hospital.
The anti-terrorist unit responded immediately and disabled the device, the police statement said.
Police said earlier they had seized large amounts of weaponry in areas recaptured from the guerrillas and arrested dozen of ethnic Albanians on charges of illegal arms possession.