Albanians live in fear of forced exodus from Macedonia

With the Macedonian parliament stormed by the Slavs who are furious with the Nato deal, ethnic Albanians cower in suburbs

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Straw pulls out of Skopje visit as war looms

Fear was running through the Macedonian capital last night as ethnic Albanians gathered in nervous huddles on street corners to discuss the storming of parliament by army reservists the night before.

When Macedonia's parliament was stormed on Monday night, there was shooting in the dingy Albanian suburb of Gazibaba too. The local people say the Macedonian police, who have a checkpoint just up the road, started shooting in the air for no apparent reason. "They were trying to frighten us," one man said. "They want us to leave."

They were cleaning up the debris around Macedonia's parliament building yesterday.

There have been no reports of casualties in Skopje since the city saw its first serious disturbances, as angry Macedonian Slavs broke into parliament, incensed at a Nato-brokered ceasefire with Albanian rebels.

In the poor Albanian districts on the far side of the Vardar river, the sight of angry crowds chanting "Albanians to the gas chambers" has had its effect.

A young Albanian journalist, who gave his name only as Xhemal, had just returned to Gazibaba from driving his sister to Kosovo, where she will join more than 50,000 refugees who have already fled there from the crisis in Macedonia.

Almost half the people in Gazibaba are already refugees. They fled here, to Skopje, from the towns and villages affected by earlier rounds of fighting.

Now some are considering moving on again, as the capital begins to look a less safe place to stay. Some of those here came from the village of Aracinovo, just a few miles up the road. It was a Nato ceasefire deal, under which Albanian rebels were escorted safely out of Aracinovo, that enraged the mob who stormed parliament.

"I wanted my parents to leave but they refused," says Xhemal. He says he will not go either. "I was born here. This is my home," he says. "We are prepared to surrender our lives. It's a hard thing to say, but I am ready to die."

Xhemal said he had heard that Macedonian Slavs were planning to attack Albanian areas, to intimidate Albanians into fleeing, but this could not be verified.

The Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says riots in the southern city of Bitola, where hundreds of Albanian homes and shops were set alight earlier this month, were a pogrom deliberately aimed at driving Albanians out of town.

"Skopje will not be like Bitola," says Xhemal. "Here we have the means to defend ourselves." Others in the district agree, though they say they have no guns.

The Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Amry (NLA) yesterday threatened to enter Skopje if there were attacks on Albanians there. A rebel commander called Sokolli claimed the UCK had "two brigades in the outskirts of Skopje". It echoes a claim made a few days ago by another rebel commander.

Opinion is hardening on both sides of the river. "All my life, I have never been a nationalist, but now I have become one," insisted Milo, a young Macedonian. "Nato is holding back our army," he said angrily. "If they allowed us, we could kill all the terrorists in two days." But the Macedonian army was losing on the battlefield months before the controversial Aracinovo ceasefire.

Questions are being asked over how much the Macedonian government did to prevent Monday night's riots. Witnesses say police did little to interfere.

President Boris Trajkovski, in a nationally broadcast radio address, said yesterday that his government's aim was to "eliminate the terrorists from Macedonia". But he pledged that government forces would do so "with as little loss of human life as possible".

The government was forced into accepting the Aracinovo ceasefire by Nato and EU diplomats furious it had begun an offensive there behind their backs, even as they were announcing that peace talks were working. But the Macedonian government is still smarting over its climbdown. When the Macedonia crisis first began, Nato and the EU were desperate to shore up the Macedonian government against the rebels. In the Slav-dominated centre of Skopje yesterday, graffiti showed Nato depicted with a swastika. That is a sign of how successfully the rebels have changed the agenda.