Efforts to head off a new Balkan war in Macedonia acquired new urgency yesterday, as an ethnic Albanian guerrilla leader said talks were moving too slowly and Washington accused rebels of "blatant" violations of a July 5th ceasefire.
Mr Ali Ahmeti, the elusive political leader of the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA), said the talks were going too slowly.
The comments bode ill for the prospects of a compromise as Macedonian and Albanian political parties sat down for a fourth day of negotiations brokered by international mediators.
The discussions, aimed at bringing an end to the five month guerrilla insurgency against government forces, have stalled over the key Albanian demand that their language be made official in the country.
The US issued the strongest sign of international concern yet that a fragile ceasefire in the country which had been reinstated last week was in trouble.
"These are blatant violations of the ceasefire agreement, and they are unacceptable," a US State Department spokesman, Mr Charles Hunter, said.
The US had pointed to a weekend attack on a convoy transporting the Macedonian Interior Minister, Mr Ljube Boskovski, near Skopje and the wounding of four Macedonian soldiers near Tetovo in the north-west, along with reported acts of violence and intimidation against refugees returning home.
Mr Ahmeti, who is believed to be in neighbouring Kosovo hiding from a Macedonian government attempt to bring him to trial on war crimes charges, rejected the US accusations.
"The US is badly informed about the reality of the situation on the ground," Mr Ahmeti said. He also said guerrillas could not accept a proposal for restricted use of the Albanian language.
The Macedonian National Security Adviser, Mr Nikola Dimitrov, who is involved in the talks, said the ethnic Albanian negotiators were taking orders from Mr Ahmeti, whose NLA is not permitted in the talks.
He said the Albanians were asking for solutions that were impossible for the Macedonian side to accept so the conflict could resume, in an attempt to grab territory for an exclusively ethnic Albanian population.
The two sides are also far apart on another ethnic Albanian demand that an independent ethnic Albanian police force be set up in certain areas.
In a sign that Macedonia was ready for trouble whatever the outcome of the talks, a Defence Ministry spokesman, Mr Marjan Gjurovski, said the government had accepted a British offer to train Macedonian soldiers in anti-terrorist combat.