JUBLJANA, Slovenia, July 23 - Police officers used tear gas and rubber bullets early Friday morning to help quell rioting in Struga, a lakeside town in southwestern Macedonia. It was the first major outbreak of civil unrest since the end of an interethnic conflict in the country three years ago.
Government officials said at least 17 people were injured in clashes as ethnic Macedonians, protesting plans that would give the country's Albanian minority greater rights and powers, ran through the town. Mobs attacked Albanian-owned shops and property as well as government cars and vehicles belonging to a European Union police monitoring mission.
The violence came a week after the Macedonian Parliament passed laws redrawing municipal boundaries and giving greater powers to local councils. Macedonians unhappy with the plans accuse the government of gerrymandering along ethnic lines.
The changes are linked to a peace plan devised by local leaders and foreign diplomats and advisers at the end of a seven-month conflict in 2001 between ethnic Albanian rebels and government security forces.
Albanians make up about 25 percent of Macedonia's population of two million, but in the north and west, and in towns like Struga, they have a majority. The new laws will give them control over matters like education, health and economic development.
The violence on Friday appeared to have been prompted by the visit to Struga on Thursday night of Macedonia's defense minister, Vlado Buckovski, and Nikola Kurciev, the leader of the Social Democrats, the main party in the Macedonian government. The two men were trapped inside the party's local headquarters, surrounded by a crowd throwing firebombs, according to the state-owned Macedonian Information Agency. The police used tear gas to help get them out, the agency reported.
While the slow-going peace effort has at times been threatened by ethnic Albanian gunmen and renegade security forces, this was the first time civilian protests had turned violent. Mainstream public opinion in the country's two main ethnic groups has supported the peace effort, but more recently Macedonian newspapers have been highly critical of the government's decision to change municipal boundaries. Critics say it has effectively gerrymandered local districts along ethnic lines.
The government is a coalition administration made up of Social Democrats and former members of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that was behind the 2001 conflict.
"It was not in the Ohrid peace agreement," said Saso Ordanovski, editor in chief of Forum, a weekly magazine. He was referring to the agreement that ended the fighting and laid the foundations for ethnic and political reforms. "It is damaging the agreement," he added. "Macedonians are increasingly afraid that Albanians are exercising their territorial interests."
More demonstrations are expected Monday in the capital, Skopje.
