Besides small arms, Macedonians and ethnic Albanians also voluntarily submitted some 100,000 pieces of ammunition and 165 kilos of explosives, Blagoja Markovski, the spokesman of the operation, said Tuesday at the end of the programme.

The programme started on November 1, as a joint action by Macedonian authorities and the United Nations Development Programme, which financed most of it.

A new move by the authorities to find out what happened to people who went missing during the 2001 conflict appears to be little more than a cynical attempt to keep their angry relatives at bay.

Analysts say a new government body set up on December 8 to investigate the whereabouts of the 20 disappeared is unlikely to make any headway with the cases as, in doing so, it could implicate

Between May 19 and August 9, 2003, 700

STRASBOURG 08.12.2003 - A delegation of the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities will be visiting Skopje and Tetovo from 8-12 December 2003 in the context of the monitoring of the implementation of this convention by "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". The visit is the 29th country visit conducted by the Advisory Committee since its establishment in 1998. The Committee is composed of 18 independent experts elected by

Source: IWPR and Saferworld
Disarming civilians in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia means making them see guns are a threat to security, not a guarantee.

By David Quin, Vladimir Jovanovski and Ana Petruseva in Macedonia; Naser Miftari, Artan Mustafa and Jeta Xharra in Kosovo; and Ilir Aliaj and Lazar Semini in Albania (BCR No 470, 27-Nov-03)

Sweat pours down Emin Limani's face as he picks up gun after gun - and then shovels them into a furnace. He's melting them down as part of a scheme to disarm Kosovo.

CAGLAVICA AND BELO POLJE, KOSOVO - When he was 5 years old, Yeton saw his grandmother gunned down by black-uniformed Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers. Then, his mother picked him up and ran out of the village toward the Montenegrin border.

"I wish we could go back to our house and our friends," he says, now standing on a road outside a refugee shelter. "I wish we didn't have to be hungry anymore."

Although four years have passed since

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is pleased to be able to present, for the second time, a comprehensive overview of the situation of internally displaced persons in the OSCE region to the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. The report was compiled by the NRC's Geneva-based Global IDP Project, the leading international body monitoring IDP situations worldwide, in cooperation with NRC field offices.

This overview clearly shows that internal

Roma refugees who fled from Kosovo to Macedonia during the 1999 conflict are not expected to take up Skopje's offer of political asylum because many are under the false impression that they will be resettled in the West.

The community could now face deportation back to Kosovo, despite international concerns for their safety.

A new European Union-backed asylum package