Macedonian peace talks got back on track yesterday, with hopes of a deal despite the killings of five alleged ethnic Albanian rebels by police in the capital and clashes in the north-west.
"The agreement could even be signed within a few hours," the EU mediator, Mr Francois Leotard, said.
Leaders of Macedonian political parties, meeting heads of ethnic Albanian parties for more than a week, dropped surprise demands made on Monday for NATO guarantees of fast disarmament of ethnic Albanian rebels, a senior Macedonian official said.
"We're moving on," the official said, adding NATO officials had offered other, unspecified, guarantees about disarmament to help avert a new Balkan war in the former Yugoslav republic.
A tenuous ceasefire had been dealt a further blow yesterday when police killed five rebels in a raid on a house in Skopje, saying they had plotted attacks. And rebels and government forces clashed overnight near the flashpoint city of Tetovo.
The official predicted the politicians might reach a final political agreement late last night on a package of measures to help improve the rights of Macedonia's Albanians, who make up a third of the population.
If so, a signing ceremony for a political deal to undercut support for the five-month rebellion would probably be held in Skopje on Friday. The NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, was expected to attend.
The President, Mr Boris Trajkovski, spoke with Lord Robertson yesterday and NATO's special envoy, Mr Pieter Feith, visited the talks in Ohrid, in south-west Macedonia. NATO plans to deploy about 3,500 troops to collect arms handed in by rebels.
After the killings in Skopje, police showed off a cache of weapons seized in the dawn raid on a one-storey house in a run-down Albanian quarter, including assault rifles, grenades and mortar rounds. Police said the rebels had tried to shoot when they stormed the building around dawn. There was little sign of a struggle with no bullet marks on walls, but pools of blood on the floor showed evidence of the raid.
"A terrorist group was preparing an attack on Skopje and the police carried out an operation early this morning," the Interior Minister, Mr Ljube Boskovski, said.
A rebel commander, code-named Leka, said the army caused extensive damage in the village of Neprosteno, north-west of mainly Albanian Tetovo, with heavy mortar fire through the night.
"We can't figure out what the Macedonian forces want to achieve with such actions," he said.
"Whatever it could be doesn't suit the situation. Shelling civilians' houses doesn't contribute to the peace of this country." A western source confirmed that houses in the village had been damaged by shell fire from the Macedonian side overnight, but could not give any further details.
The violence tore into a truce between the security forces and the guerrillas, who appeared in Macedonia in February. The NATO-brokered ceasefire was restored only late last month after earlier bouts of heavy fighting. The peace talks have reached agreement on widening the use of Albanian in Macedonia, granting ethnic Albanians more jobs in the police, raising the status of Islam and making other constitutional reforms to help defuse the rebellion.
The NATO envoy in Ohrid at the talks said Mr Feith had explained NATO's conditions for troop deployment, which included signature of a political accord by politicians, an offer of amnesty to rebels and a guerrilla promise to disarm. But a statement the Macedonians wanted the rebel commander, Mr Ali Ahmeti, to sign explicitly left the door open to possible prosecutions by the UN war crimes tribunal.