How does the United States perceive the inter-ethnic relations following the conflict?
Ambassador Lawrence Butler: When the trust or the confidence of the relationship that the ethnic Albanian and the ethnic Macedonian community had in the Republic of Macedonia, which most people assessed was good, when trust between two people is broken, whether between you and your husband, or a parent and a child, or one company with another company, it’s very hard to rebuild that, but there’s no alternative. It’s being rebuilt, it’s being rebuilt every time Ali Ahmeti sees President Trajkovski or sits down with the Prime Minister. It’s built when every minister sits down with his or her deputy minister no matter whether the minister is an ethnic Albanian or an ethnic Macedonian. We see signs of dialogue returning, willingness to engage in commerce returning, the willingness to focus on repairing walls while the passage of time will help repair the hurt and heal some of the scars that happened in 2001. This country still has a future; it has a strong future where Macedonians, Albanian
