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. The incident was typical ofproblems implementing the Ohrid accord, he said. Sometimes youtalk to the Albanians leaders for four or five hours to let the policeinto villages.At the end they say no.The situation was improving but remained very fragile, he added.The Albanian population know they control the territory and arealways making new demands, for example that the police should wearAlbanian-language shirts.The Macedonian population is reallydisturbed and in case of a potential conflict would leave the area, heargued. There are many weapons here.It seems that disarmamentwas not successful or that there is a need for a second round.In December 2001, police killed an Albanian farmer near Semsevo.The Lions were the main suspects for the killing, the OSCE officersaid. The Lions were removed from that point.But on Friday I sawtwo APCs full of Lions moving around.The police still need time tobelieve that there is not going to be a renewed conflict.Craig Jenness, ambassador to the OSCE mission in Skopje,acknowledges that there is a general lack of confidence between thetwo communities. The Albanian community sees them [the police] asthe instrument they fought against during the war.So it s going totake a lot of time before they treat them as their own. 1 190 MACE DONI AJenness said that Ahmeti s move toward mainstream politics left avacuum in the leadership of the National Liberation Army into whichmore hardline commanders have stepped.But Jenness also said thatsuch groups do not appear strong enough to overturn the peace process.The vast majority of people are tired of fighting and want to get onwith their lives.The effect of population displacement during the conflict is anothermajor obstacle to a return to normal living.The current populationtrends raise the question of whether Macedonia might soon need aCyprus-type, Green Line peacekeeping framework.Some 70,000Macedonian civilians fled Tetovo and other ethnically mixed regionsfor Skopje.The UNHCR is trying to persuade them to return byrebuilding homes, repairing schools and providing bus services.Afurther 70,000 ethnic Albanian civilians fled, most of them to Kosovo.All but 7,000 ethnic Albanians had returned but at least 19,000Macedonians had not, a UNHCR official in Tetovo, Senni Bulbul,also a Turk, explained. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to return, he concludes. Someof them will never come back.For some of them there is nothing tocome back for. The Jugocrom aluminium factory at the town ofJuginovice, for example, was closed after privatisation and thousandsof people were dismissed.Many Macedonians felt better off in refugeecentres set up in Skopje where they receive three meals a day.Otherswith children at school in the capital would not consider moving backuntil the end of the academic year in June.We visited Neproshteno, an ethnically mixed village of 1,200 people,15 miles north of Tetovo.Some villagers, in a play on words, call itneprosteno, meaning unforgiving in Macedonian.About 200 Mace-donian families left during the conflict but only 40 had returned. Therewas fighting here, 28 Macedonian houses were destroyed by shelling,said an elderly Macedonian, who refused to give his name, in adilapidated village shop empty except for chocolate and plum brandy.We lost 58 cars, all our tractors and our television sets.I came backhere on 5 January.From August, I was in Skopje.In the autumn wecame back here in convoys to collect some possessions.We onlystayed here during the day.Most of the people in Skopje only comeback here at the weekend.The Albanians have too many weapons.Even underage kids cankill you for fun.NATO moves too slowly.Perhaps it will be all rightin 15 years. I MP L E ME NT AT I ON OF OHRI D 191Is the Government doing enough to help them? We curse them,another Macedonian said, his friends nodding agreement. If itdepended on the Government nothing would happen.We know thatwe are dependent on European help.Would they vote in the elections?We are going to think about it because nobody from Skopje helpedus here.The politicians never came to see us.During the last electionsI wasn t called to vote.I went to the polling station and they saidthere was no need to vote because it already was fixed for the VMRO.Nobody s interested in the poor people.The Government and theMPs only think about themselves.The previous summer, NLA gunmen kidnapped three Macedonianmen from the village who still were missing, the villagers said.A fourthman was found shot dead in his backyard.The three, Kirsto Gorgovski,68, and Cvetko and Vasko Mihailovski, aged 54 and 35, were among12 Macedonians who disappeared and were believed to have beenkidnapped by the NLA in a case that set off a nationwide furore similarto that over the raped road-workers.The fourth man found dead wasStojan Mihailovski, a cousin of Vasko.Macedonian special police had set up sandbagged positions in thefields surrounding Neproshteno.On the Albanian side of the village,which is divided into ethnic areas by a small stream, farmers such asVeb Zulbehar, 48, complained that the police presence meant theycould not sow this year s crop of corn, potatoes and tobacco. Weworked the fields last year but the police took one of us, he said. Weblocked the roads and they released him. Many of the police in thefields were Macedonian farmers from the village called up as reservists.Others were members of the Lions, OSCE sources say
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