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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 07/04
Moving Macedonia Towards Self-Sufficiency: A New Security Approach for NATO and the EU
November 15, 2003
Abstract
Macedonia's 15 September 2002 election suggests the country may have turned a corner on the road to stability. Widely anticipated fraud and violence mostly did not materialise. Unlike in neighbouring Kosovo a few weeks later, a cross section of voters from all ethnicities streamed to the polls. They elected a government that has embraced the Framework Agreement brokered by the European Union (EU), the U.S. and NATO at Ohrid in August 2001 to end the incipient civil war and that has pledged to manage inter-ethnic issues through consensus, not simply division of spoils, to overhaul the scandal-plagued "Lions" security unit, and fight massive, endemic corruption.
While one should be wary of post-campaign euphoria, a certain optimism seems justified. Ali Ahmeti, the ex- rebel leader turned Albanian party leader, has shown cooperation. Prime Minister Crvenkovski has long accepted the political risks of backing the controversial package of concessions to Albanians in the Framework Agreement. In an astonishingly smooth negotiation, the Social Democrat-led Macedonian coalition concluded a power-sharing arrangement with an Albanian party previously labelled terrorists and with whom contact had been forbidden.
