Paris, 18 June 2002. - Returning from his official visit to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on 16 and 17 June, President Bühler said the upcoming parliamentary elections (due to be held on 15/9/02) will test the democratic process and the level of stability achieved in the country. He called on the Council of Europe and the OSCE to increase considerably the number of international observers being deployed to monitor the elections. “Representatives of all political hues and the two major ethnic groups have expressed concern about a fair electoral process”, he said. “They are requesting up to 1200 monitors and want them to stay throughout the election process”. 
 
Ljube Boskowski, Minister of Internal Affairs, said he would like to see “monitors in front of every barracks of the Macedonian special forces” to counter allegations by the opposition that these forces could be used to intimidate voters or to provoke incidents. In the light of international pressure to dissolve the “Lions” Special Force, he declared that it would soon be transformed into a border guards unit and its composition would in future reflect the ethnic diversity of the population. Bühler welcomed the announcement saying that the police and the army could play an important integration role. 
 
Referring to the Ohrid Framework Agreement, concluded after the cessation of ethnic hostilities last year, Stojan Andov, President of the National Assembly, stressed “we paid a political price for the crisis, but Parliament will stick to the agreement and continue implementing it in cooperation with the EU representative”. As a result of the agreement the recently adopted new electoral law (one round of voting and a proportional system) would provide the basis for a clear result and would reduce the potential for manipulations, Macedonian parliamentarians said. Representatives of the opposition Social Democrats said that any new government should again be based on the principle of including an Albanian party, thus not excluding a coalition with former Albanian military leader Ali Ahmeti’s recently formed party. However, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski condemned the “international community” for “encouraging a terrorist leader to transform himself into a political leader”. 
 
Different signals were given regarding the presence of international forces in the country. This is an important question in view of a possible take-over by the EU of NATO’s Task Force Fox (TFF: the protection and extraction force for EU and OSCE observers monitoring the re-entry programme under the Ohrid agreement) at the end of October this year to become the first ESDP mission. While Defence Minister Vlado Popovski called for a continuous engagement of NATO because of its stabilising impact and the slowness of confidence-building among the ethnic groups, and asked NATO for more intelligence sharing, Foreign Affairs Minster Slobodan Casule said progress was evident and the presence of foreign forces would give the unjustified impression that the country still needed protection. He called on NATO to step up efforts to put a stop to organised crime between Macedonia and Kosovo. It was important to prevent incidents, which “force you to look at each other rather than to look for the smugglers”. 
 
Asked about regional cooperation he announced that Belgrade had now come to the conclusion that it would be in the interest of the region if the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia joined the Partnership for Peace programme. 
 
President of State Boris Trajkowski said progress following the success of the re-entry programme was so promising that the TFF might not be needed after the elections. President Bühler suggested after the visit that the EU should assess the situation during and after the elections before making any decision on taking over the mission and that particular attention should be given to the progress achieved by the national authorities to ensure a permanent presence of police forces in the villages of the re-entry programme.