All hold up the prospect of a closer and closer relationship with the EU and Nato, with its benefits in terms of trade, aid and security. All threaten, obliquely, that this is in jeopardy unless ethnic Macedonians and Albanians swiftly reach a compact and thus outflank the fighters in the hills. The likely immediate result will be some kind of framework agreement in the next few days. It sounds rational, even promising. But it is difficult to express how truly elusive is this goal of a hard and fast agreement.
Issues matter much less than attitudes.
Both sides are aggrieved, both are divided, both react with neuralgic intensity to certain words, and both are almost tearful in their view that they have been slandered in the eyes of the world. Macedonians feel that, after all their efforts to accommodate the Albanian minority, in contrast to what happened in Serbia, they are being branded as oppressors. Albanians feel that after years of waiting for their rights to be granted in practice as well as on paper, they are being labelled as criminals and wreckers because some impatient young men made an armed demonstration. As that last phrase suggests, the two sides differ above all on the facts. According to Albanians, a small body of lightly armed men, most from Macedonia, staged a show of force to draw attention to grievances and withdrew before the government offensive.