Macedonians vote on crucial referendum
Sunday, November 7, 2004 Posted: 6:11 AM EST (1111 GMT)
Macedonian soldiers cast their ballots Saturday ahead of Sunday's referendum.
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Macedonia's peace process was at a crossroads Sunday as voters cast ballots in a referendum on whether to grant local autonomy to the country's ethnic Albanians or risk undermining a peace pact with the restive minority. Voters were considering whether to annul a law that redrew districts in the Balkan republic and made the ethnic Albanians a dominant force in 16 out of 84 districts - effectively granting Albanians a large degree of self-rule.
The law was approved by parliament in August as part of a Western-brokered peace deal signed by the government and Albanian rebels three years ago. But the measure has infuriated Macedonian hard-liners, who forced the referendum to try and block the reform. They argue that allowing self-rule for the ethnic Albanians - who make up a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million people - would lead to the country's eventual breakup. The ethnic Albanians mostly live in western parts of the country, near the border with Albania.
International officials in Macedonia have warned that revoking the law could destabilize the country and undermine Macedonia's chances of joining the European Union and NATO. Britain, France, neighboring Albania, as well as Macedonian Prime Minister Hari Kostov, have urged voters to boycott the referendum.
If Sunday's turnout is less than 50 percent, the reform will be automatically approved regardless of the vote. There are 1.69 million eligible voters in Macedonia, including the ethnic Albanians who said they would boycott the referendum. Thousands of observers - most supporters of the hardline opposition groups, but some from abroad - have deployed to nearly 3,000 polling places across the country.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) and were to close twelve hours later, with the observers closely monitoring the turnout that initially seemed low, but was expected to pick up during the day. In the first three hours of voting, the turnout was around 4.3 percent, said Zoran Tanevski, a spokesman for Macedonia's election authorities. No incidents have been reported at the polling stations, Tanevski added.
Polling stations in ethnic Albanian-populated areas were extremely quiet as voters of the minority group boycotted the referendum. Todor Petrov, a leader of the Macedonian World Congress, which pushed for the referendum, said his group was placing about 6,000 monitors at polling places, saying he feared the government would try to "distort" the vote. Representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were also expected to monitor the referendum.
