May 13, 2008, 12:16 GMT
Skopje - An ethnic Albanian official on Tuesday accused political rivals of 'instilling' violence into an already tense campaign for Macedonia's snap elections on June 1.
Shots were fired on a convoy of an ethnic Albanian leader during campaigning Monday, while a man was killed in an apparent political argument over the weekend.
The opposition Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) leader Ali Ahmeti was unhurt in the incident near the Albanian hub-town Tetovo in Western Macedonia. DUI said the attack was an attempt on Ahmeti's life orchestrated by the rival Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA).
'We are very concerned that DPA will remain by their policy of violence instead of democratic means,' said Elmira Mehmeti, a DUI spokeswoman and parliament candidate in the upcoming poll.
The attack on Ahmeti, after which police detained one suspect, was 'the summit the policy of violence ... the DPA are trying to instill into the election process,' she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
DPA officials denied all allegations and responded with accusations of their own at the DUI address.
The shooting followed Saturday's fatal stabbing in a village in the same area, as well as a series of violent incidents involving political arguments or campaigning among the Albanians grouped behind DUI or DPA.
The stabbing victim was a member of DPA, the party said. The killing came a day after DPA supporters beat five DUI activists campaigning in an Albanian-dominated village near Skopje.
With Macedonia effectively partitioned along ethnic lines, DUI and DPA are campaigning for supremacy among their compatriots, who make up around 25 per cent of the 2 million Macedonians.
DPA was a part of outgoing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's nationalist-Macedonian VMRO-DPMNE party. DUI has accused the DPA head Menduh Thaci of using his influence to protect the attackers.
'How else can you can explain that the police never catch anybody, while our offices are being ransacked every day?' Mehmeti said.
The ruling coalition collapsed in April amid DPA complaints that reforms to improve the position of the Albanian minority were lagging and pressure on Gruevski to recognize neighbouring Kosovo, where the Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia in February.
The final blow to the coalition was inflicted in early April when Greece effectively vetoed a NATO membership invitation to Skopje in response to the two countries' diplomatic row over the name of Macedonia.
Kosovo emerged from a bloody conflict that started in 1998 as a result of an Albanian insurgency against heavy-handed Serbian rule. Macedonia narrowly escaped an all-out war in 2001, when Ahmeti launched his own rebellion to improve the status of his compatriots.
A bigger conflict in Macedonia was averted when the Albanians and the Skopje government agreed to a peace-and-reform deal giving the Albanians more rights.
The deal included an amnesty for Ahmeti and his rebels, who launched the DUI and entered politics. Today DUI says violence such as the shooting on Monday would harm the Albanian cause.
'We are ... concerned that the image of the Albanians in Macedonia would be tainted by acts of violence and very surprised and worried about why the Macedonian prime minister neither reacted to, nor condemned the violence and the attempted murder against Ahmeti,' Mehmeti said.
The international community and Skopje are wary that tension in western Macedonia, which is comprehensively dominated by Albanians, may grow into a renewed all-out conflict.
Tension continued to grow though all big parties agreed to a code promising to act in line with democratic standards. The 2006 parliamentary elections were also marred by violence among Albanian rivals.
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