BASIC DATA SHEET

"I think that the crisis will be overcome definitely in the first months of the coming year with the help of the international community," Trajkovski said in his New Year's address to the nation.

"This year has been very difficult and we would not like it to be repeated," Trajkovski said in a reference

SKOPJE, Dec 25 (AFP) - After being confronted with the most serious turbulence since its independence in 1991, the conflict with ethnic Albanian guerrillas, Macedonia is trying to consolidate through political reforms a fragile peace still threatened by hardliners on both sides.

On November 16, in a vote muscled by the European envoys, the Macedonian parliament adopted constitutional reforms giving the same rights to the ethnic minorities, primarily the Albanian community, as to the majority Macedonian population.

Three months before the historic vote,

This Programme Update is intended for reporting on Annual Appeals.
Appeal Target: CHF 956,952
Period covered: September - November 2001
(last Programme Update issued No. 01; August 2001

"At a Glance"

Appeal coverage: 173.1% Related Appeals: N/A

Outstanding needs: None

Skopje, December 21, 2001

Distinguished President of the Assembly
Distinguished Prime Minister and Ministers
Distinguished members of the Parliament
Distinguished guest,
Citizens of the Republic of Macedonia,

At the end of the first year of the third millennium, we are at the end of an exceptionally difficult year both for the Republic of Macedonia and for the whole world.

Four months after the end of fierce ethnic conflict, the northwestern town of Tetovo now looks like a peaceful, flourishing place. But beneath the surface, there are sinister goings-on, with Macedonian residents living in fear of threatening telephone calls and attempts to evict them from their homes.

Most of Tetovo's inhabitants are ethnic Albanians who live awkwardly beside Macedonian and Roma minorities. It

Prague, 20 December 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The international community is learning.

UN peacekeeping missions in Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, and UN-authorized NATO-led peacekeeping missions

Police are back on the beat in rebel villages where for months they dared not tread. The officers patrol in teams, half ethnic Albanian, half Macedonian, with international observers trailing in their wake. So far it seems to be working.

The villages stand in the ethnic Albanian heartland of western Macedonia, close to the border with Kosovo. They belong to that 10 per cent of the country which remained unpoliced during the