In a second major policy reversal by the Skopje authorities, President Boris Trajkovski said on 30 May that he is prepared to introduce an amnesty for UCK fighters, who would also be allowed to exit safely to Kosova. The measure would not apply to the organizers of the insurgency or to individuals who killed Macedonian soldiers or police, Deutsche Welle reported. Trajkovski's spokesman said that details will be worked out shortly with NATO, whose foreign ministers called for such an amnesty at their recent Budapest meeting. Observers note that Trajkovski's offer appears modeled on an approach recently used to successfully end the ethnic Albanian insurgency in Serbia's Presevo region. If the constitutional changes and the amnesty are carried out, they will go far to separate those Albanians wanting a fairer deal for their own people on the one hand from nationalist extremists and criminal trouble-makers on the other.
Villagers face dwindling or exhausted supplies of food and medicine.
According to that plan, the heavily Albanian-populated areas of western Macedonia around Debar and Tetovo would be ceded to Albania, while Macedonian populated areas on the western bank of Lake Ohrid would be added to Macedonia. But Prime Minister Georgievski and several other leading politicians lambasted the plan, ruling out any change in Macedonia's borders, the BBC's Serbian Service reported. The situation in Macedonia is still unstable. Macedonia and the Vatican are the only European states that recognize Taiwan, which is officially known as the Republic of China. Macedonian Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva told a news conference on May 25 that Macedonia will restore ties to Beijing, which were broken when Skopje recognized Taipei in 1999.