Persons who participated in the Bitola riots set free.
Following the adoption of the Amnesty Law, the Bitola public
prosecutor's office asked for cancellation of the investigation for 102
persons who participated in last year's riots in this city, when about 80
shops owned by ethnic Albanians or Muslim Macedonians were demolished and
set on fire. The criminal investigation was thereby stopped.
Re-entering of police in crisis regions.
On March 22, the villagers from Vaksince, a village in the Kumanovo
area, stoned the vehicles of the ethnically mixed police patrols and of
the journalistic teams that arrived in the village. The ethnically mixed
police patrols were to patrol in the village.
On March 23, one police and one army checkpoint were removed from their
positions near the city stadium. The citizens-ethnic Macedonians who live
in this region, are concerned for the removal of the police posts.
Germany remains on the head of NATO in the next three months.
On March 22, the German Bundestag with majority of votes agreed the
German troops within the NATO "Amber Fox" mission in Macedonia to continue
with their mission in the next three months.
EU
on the head of the peace mission in Macedonia.
On March 24, EU high representative of common foreign and security
policy Javier Solana said that the Union would take over from NATO the
peace mission in Macedonia in September. This will be the first mission of
the European forces for rapid intervention.
Positions about the six election regions coordinated.
On March 22, representatives of the four parties - signers of the
Framework Agreement, defined the boundaries of the election units from the
new chart, according to which the fourth parliamentary elections will be
organized. The entire country will be divided on six election regions with
approximately the same population. According to some announcements, the
next parliamentary elections will take place on September 15, 2002.