Election Puts Macedonia on Knife Edge

Macedonia went to the polls yesterday for the first time since it was riven by communal warfare a year ago, with most people hoping that the election will heal the scars of last year's bitter fighting in the Balkan republic.

An election campaign marred by ethnic violence which left at least six people dead resulted yesterday in record turnouts approaching 70% from the rival Macedonian Slav and ethnic Albanian communities, according to state television.

The voters' enthusiasm highlighted the popular hope for peace and an end to the intimidation and corruption that has flourished under the outgoing coalition government of Slav nationalists and Albanian moderates.

While the former communist Social Democrats under Branko Crvenkovski are expected to come first in the elections to the 120-seat parliament - wresting power from the VMRO Slav nationalists under the current prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski - the delicate ethnic power-sharing arrangements supported by the west depend on the showing of the new Albanian party led by the former rebel leader Ali Ahmeti.

Mr Ahmeti, who led the Albanian insurgency that forced the country to the brink of civil war last year, has traded his fatigues for a suit, shirt and tie.

His new party, the Democratic Union for Integration, is tipped to emerge as the strongest Albanian contender, giving it a formidable claim on seats in the new cabinet.

The west has invested heavily in the election and security was tight: 3,500 specially trained police officers were deployed, and Nato-led troops patrolled into the night in some restive areas.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe fielded 900 election observers, the biggest ever operation of its kind.

The Americans are hoping to sign off Macedonia as a peacekeeping success. The Nato mission, mustering a mere 800 troops, comes up for renewal next month and the Pentagon - which now has much bigger fish to fry in the Gulf, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Balkans - is keen to pull out.

The fallout from the election, however, could be grimmer, with disputes and vote-rigging allegations spilling into violence as the power struggle heats up.

Beneath the surface the situation in Macedonia is extremely fragile. Yesterday's voting, though largely peaceful, featured a string of ominous incidents.

According to election observers, cars without licence plates cruised the town of Kumanovo, intimidating voters.

In the northern village of Leshok, an ethnic Albanian stronghold, a group of men fired Kalashnikovs before seizing ballot boxes. Other incidents of gunfire in or around polling stations were reported.

The hardline Slav nationalist interior minister Ljube Boskovski, who is being investigated for alleged war crimes by the tribunal in the Hague, has threatened to have Mr Ahmeti murdered should he enter the capital, Skopje.

All the opinion polls indicate that Mr Ahmeti is laying strong claim to a place in the new government. If he is denied, his National Liberation Army of Albanian guerrillas, ostensibly disarmed after last year's peace agreement, could return to arms.

The opinion polls suggest that Mr Ahmeti's popularity among the Albanians could see the Albanian share of the 120 seats in parliament rise from 24 to 28.

The real test comes later this month, when the parties attempt to form a new coalition government. The VMRO has repeatedly said it will not govern with Mr Ahmeti, whom it considers a "terrorist."

The peace deal that ended the conflict gave the ethnic Albanians broader rights in return for the disarming of the rebels. But the reconciliation process remains threatened by hardliners on both sides.

While western mediators like to see the past year as a success in avoiding the brutal warfare that swept through the Balkans through the 1990s, the International Crisis Group thinktank in Brussels recently described Macedonia as a sump of corruption and officially sanctioned crime.