Supporters of a Western-backed peace plan are facing an uphill battle to convince a skeptical public that a NATO plan to collect ethnic Albanian rebel arms can save their country from civil war.
The guerrillas vowed Sunday to hand over their arms to a NATO task force and return to their homes, but few among the majority Macedonian Orthodox Christian population believe that the conflict will be solved so simply.
Many accuse of the West of backing ethnic Albanian extremism and forcing what they see as their weak and corrupt politicians to back a humiliating peace plan which rewards the guerrillas for their rebellion.
"The United States supported the terrorists. They supplied all their weapons. Macedonian Christian people have suffered during all this and no-one has listened to us," says 49-year old Ace Nikusevci.
Most Macedonians believe that the West encouraged violent Albanian nationalism by supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) rebellion against Yugoslav rule in Kosovo, and that NATO has since failed to stop guerrilla weapons and ideology leaking over the border into Macedonia.
Many also believe that the military support given by the West to the KLA during its 1998-1999 war has continued.
Murky conspiracy theories -- encouraged by government hardliners and the nationalist press -- accuse the United States and NATO of plotting the break-up of Macedonia and of protecting Albanian criminals.
Western leaders have repeatedly and angrily denied all such charges, but inside a 10-year old republic which fears for its very future a paranoid nationalism, laced with ethnic hatred, drives public opinion.
"This country doesn't need mediators, its needs a psychoanalyst," sighed a senior European official who helped negotiate the peace accord which underlies the ceasefire.
The Macedonian government has promised from next week to begin an information campaign to persuade press and public that the deal guarantees their safety, democracy and a place in the European mainstream.
But the anger inspired by the recent fighting is still strong, and there are no shortage of opportunist politicians ready to stoke hatred to maintain pressure on the West and further their own ambitions.
Men like Nikusevski, who joined a protest blocking NATO convoys on the road from Skopje to Kosovo, are angry.
"I worked in English hotels -- in London, Yorkshire and on the East coast -- for 26 years. I came back to build a home for my family, and live the good life in my village, on my land," he says.
"Now my house has been destroyed, burned by the terrorists, and I have nothing."
A soft spoken and ironic family man, Nikusevski likes playing football -- his team won the Trusthouse Forte hotel chain's staff league in England -- and looking after his kids and 77-year old mother -- who are now refugees in Skopje.
Two weeks ago fighting broke out in the ethnically mixed village of Tearce, nestling under the spectacular Sar mountains in the northwest of the country.
"In the night two rockets hit the bakery behind my house. All my Albanian neighbours joined the terrorists, they had no choice. In the morning all the Macedonian families left, now our houses have been ransacked, some of them burned," he said.
"The Albanians will never give up their guns, if we had a better government this wouldn't have happened. Perhaps they were paid off, perhaps they sold the Albanians our land" he said.
Stories like Nikusevski's feed the Macedonians frustrated sense of injustice in being forced to accept Albanian demands for constitutional reform, and in Macedonia ethnic hatred is never far from the surface.
"It's true that we don't like the Albanians, we've never liked them," admits Nebosja, a 22-year-old student from the mainly Albanian city of Tetovo.
"But there is a difference. We don't like them, but they hate us. Our father bring us up not to fight, but they're ready to hate and play with little guns from when they're just this tall," he says, indicating a toddler's height.
And now some of that hate is being directed towards the West.
Nikseveski, the friendly family man who wanted a lazy old age after a career at the Heathrow Hilton and Yorkshire's spa hotels, suddenly bursts out: "You remember what happened in Somalia? Those dead American soldiers dragged naked through the streets? That could happen again. That could happen here."
Then he asks for the reporter's telephone number, so he can visit him for coffee in England one day -- BLACE, Macedonia (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
