From ipilika at wellesley.edu Wed Feb 2 15:18:13 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 15:18:13 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Europe Offers U.S. an Exit Message-ID: 2316 GMT, 000201 $ Europe Offers U.S. an Exit from Kosovo $ Now What? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced Jan. 22 that Eurocorps, a five-nation European military organization, will head the Kosovo International Security Force (KFOR) for a six-month period. Although Eurocorps officials in Strasbourg, France, were quick to point out that Eurocorps has always been available for NATO missions, this is the first instance in which a non-NATO entity has been selected to lead a NATO operation. It marks a significant step in a larger process that could change the dynamics of not only the American-dominated alliance but also U.S. involvement in ongoing Balkan peacekeeping missions. More than 350 personnel from the five Eurocorps countries $ Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain $ are set to take full command of the 50,000-strong KFOR force in April 2000. Even though the headquarters unit must be augmented by troops from other NATO units, this signifies a major political victory in the European effort to develop its own military capability. Eurocorps might very well form the basis for such a force. Though multinational European defense structures have existed since World War II, they were mostly geared to fight large land battles across Europe. Since Kosovo, much more attention has been paid to Europe$s ability to project forces independently of support from the United States. The former British Defense Secretary George Robertson, now NATO secretary-general, blasted European countries for having some 1.9 million personnel under arms, but being unable to deploy so much as 2 percent of that force to Kosovo. Heeding Robertson$s calls, in December 1999, at their summit in Helsinki, Finland, the European Union (EU) called for the creation of an independent European defense identity $ initially within NATO $ able to operate when NATO chooses not to intervene. EU plans for an independent European security organization have raised concerns that Eurocorps might form the basis of a $European Army$ that could ultimately divide or weaken the structure of NATO. This would give the EU more leverage to act independently from the United States, Canada and the six European countries that belong to NATO but are not members of the EU. The United States, in particular has also expressed concern about EU plans to set up parallel political and military structures that could duplicate, rather than complement, the alliance's own organization. The KFOR operation and its sister operation in Bosnia (SFOR) are already mired by bureaucratic constraints because of the international nature of the command and control structure. However, despite these concerns and U.S. fears that the creation of an independent European defense entity could weaken Trans-Atlantic ties, it could also work in the United States$ favor by accelerating the retreat of U.S. troops from the Balkans. In effect, the United States is hostage to its Balkan policy. It cannot withdraw troops from either Bosnia or Kosovo because, without U.S. leadership and support, both missions would weaken, leading to the possibility of renewed conflict. Conversely, the United States cannot afford to indefinitely station troops in the Balkans, lest it limit possible future U.S. interventions elsewhere. This means that the designation of Eurocorps to head the KFOR mission could be a blessing and a curse for Europe. On one hand, it gives European militaries practical experience in conducting their own operations that could eventually form the basis for an independent and purely European military organization. On the other hand, in lessening their reliance on U.S. support, especially in a highly volatile area such as the Balkans, Europe may find itself ultimately with complete responsibility for both current and future Balkan operations albeit without the political will or military efficiency of the United States. What this means is that the prize for achieving European military autonomy could be inheriting the Kosovo quagmire. From ipilika at wellesley.edu Wed Feb 2 16:30:52 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2000 16:30:52 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Albania Ends Politicization of Its Civil Service Message-ID: RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC _____________________________________________________________ RFE/RL BALKAN REPORT Vol. 4, No. 9, 1 February 2000 A Twice-Weekly Review of Politics, Media and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Broadcasts in the western Balkans. *****EXCERPT ONLY***** ALBANIA ENDS POLITICIZATION OF ITS CIVIL SERVICE. Establishing a professional, non-political civil service is a problem in many countries, and not only in the former communist world. As one might suppose, the problem is particularly acute in Albania, where the pre-communist and communist past left little positive legacy on which to build. Between 19 and 20 January, the Albanian government, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the EU organized a conference in Tirana. The purpose was to launch Albania's new civil service law, which parliament passed on 11 November 1999. The law is intended to put an end to the tradition of replacing political appointees throughout the entire administration after every change of government. The new law marks a milestone in the efforts of the government to reform the legal system and is the first comprehensive law addressing the reform of Albania's public administration. Francesco Cardona of the OECD's SIGMA program--which supports the reform of government and management in Central and Eastern Europe--noted the fundamental importance of the move. He stressed that the law is "primarily not a legal act to regulate the working conditions of civil servants, like a labor code. Instead, a civil service law should strike a balance between the duties and accountabilities implied in a public job on the one hand, and the rights in securing the professional status to carry out the job on the other." Thus he stressed that the law is designed both to protect civil servants from unjustified interference, while at the same time to "upgrade and safeguard the professional quality of the staff and the service of state institutions." The focus of the law is accordingly to draw a clear line between politics and administration. Recruitment and promotion are based on merit and the professional qualities of the person who wants to enter public administration--and not on personal or political allegiances. The hiring of new employees is in the hands of a central administrative body-- and thus out of the reach of the respective heads of departments or ministries. Job security is guaranteed to competent people to prevent politically-motivated intimidation of civil servants. By stipulating that the primary allegiance of the civil servant is to the legal order of the country, the law also requires the civil servants to refuse compliance with unlawful orders and demands from their superiors. At the same time, the law restricts some constitutional rights of civil servants, such as the right to run for public office on a partisan basis and the right to conduct certain business activities. The law stipulates that civil servants must inform the institution in which they work about every private business activity that they undertake. Prime Minister Ilir Meta argued that these rules have been included "in particular to make sure that the employees serve the state and not the party, the state and not their personal interests." One of the main problems of Albania's administration is the low level of wages in public jobs. While the law is in no position to solve budgetary problems, it introduces a salary system that is even-handed and transparent. Cardona stressed that "salaries can be low and this can be understood by society and civil servants alike. What is not acceptable, however, is a lack of transparency, as well as unfairness and arbitrariness in managing the salary structure. The law attempts to tackle this problem by establishing a salary system with clearly regulated components, which are aimed at ensuring adequate levels of fairness and transparency." The main task for the government will now be to reform the civil service on the basis of the new law. That includes introducing the new salary system as well as integrating the state employees into the new framework. The main instrument in the process will be the Civil Service Commission, an independent body made up of five members. Two of those individuals will be nominated by the Council of Ministers, one by the State Control (an anti- corruption agency), and two by a body elected by local government officials. All five must then be confirmed by parliament. The commission will receive complaints from individuals about possible violations of the law by civil servants. It can then intervene with the respective institution and demand that things be set right. If the dispute cannot be settled within two months, it will be passed on to a court to rule on the issue. But the Commission is not all-powerful: state administrative bodies have the right to go to an appeals court and challenge rulings by the Commission that they think violate the law. (Fabian Schmidt) DID A VIDEO TAKE THE FIGHT OUT OF MILOSEVIC? The conventional wisdom has it that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic made peace in June 1999 out of fear that a NATO ground attack was imminent. London's "Sunday Times" of 30 January suggests that there may be a bit more to the story. According to the respected weekly, "friendly" foreign diplomats brought the Yugoslav military an American video showing the effects of the vacuum bomb, a video perhaps produced by one of the U.S. psychological warfare units. An unnamed source told the paper: "Up until then, Milosevic had believed that the air strikes were a kind of saloon bar game. But this video would have made him take a long, hard look at what was in store. The vacuum bomb makes an almighty flash and clears everything beneath it. There would have been nothing left of his army." The bomb is made of phosphorus and plasma, and generates intense heat and downward pressure, the weekly continued. The "Sunday Times" concluded that Milosevic chose to make peace rather than let the Kosova Liberation Army win a military victory in Kosova and drive the Serbs out. (Patrick Moore) QUOTATIONS OF THE WEEK. "I think one has to learn from the failures, because I think one has to recognize that the Bosnian effort was--is--a failure." -- U.S. Financier George Soros, to RFE/RL at Davos, 31 January. "Milosevic has no future. He is either going to be liquidated or commit suicide." -- Croatian presidential candidate Stipe Mesic, to Brussels' "Le Soir" of 25 January. ************************************************* Copyright (c) 2000. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved. The RFE/RL Balkan Report is prepared by Patrick Moore based on sources including reporting by RFE/RL's South Slavic Service. From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Wed Feb 2 18:51:45 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 18:51:45 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Event on Kosova Message-ID: February 2, 2000 EDITION: FINAL SECTION: GENERAL NEWS EVENTS LENGTH: 81 words HEADLINE: EVENT: DISCUSSION - WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS (WWC) TIME: 12:00 noon BODY: SUBJECT: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWC) holds a discussion on "The Postwar Situation in Kosovo." Elez Biberaj, chief, Albanian Service, Voice of America LOCATION: WWC, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Flom Auditorium, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC -- February 2, 2000 CONTACT: Cynthia Ely, 202-691-4188 From kruja at fas.harvard.edu Thu Feb 3 15:42:52 2000 From: kruja at fas.harvard.edu (Eriola Kruja) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 15:42:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Forwarded message Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 03 Feb 1997 07:45:48 -0800 From: fonsaadi at icc.al.eu.org To: webmaster at albstudent.org "Perla" ("The Pearl") http://www.shirazi.org.al Always near the readers To all the schoolars and those who are found of Albanology, Etimology, Classical Persian Poetry, Iranology etc. will have now the possibility to hand these materials in every moment in browser of scientific-cultural magazine "The Pearl" published by Cultural Foundation "Saadi Shirazi". http://www.shirazi.org.al address will conclude and hand the content of "The Pearl" magazine, icluding all its sections. To all the schoolars and those who are found of classic Persian Poetry will be possible to read the poetries of Naim "Tahayylat", in Albanian translation "The Dreams". All of you will read the skilled translations of Khayam`s Rubairat translated by the famous Noli and Hafez Ali Korcca. Also you will read the exelent translations "Gholestan and Watermelon"of Vexhi Buhara and some short peaces cutted by "Shah-Name". Appart these to the albanian reader is possible to get to know with the poetries of the famous iranian classics as Hafiz Shirazi, Saadi Shirazi, Firdusi, Rumi and Rudaki. Also to the studiouses of Albanology will be possible to read articles and studies of different fields among which we can recomand: "The denomination of albanians in centuries" from Shaban Demiraj. "The architectonic restoration in Albania" from Sulejman Dashi. "The Albanian Epous of bravemen" from Jorgo Panajoti etc. and will be presented with studies and researches of Albanologies and Iranologies according to the relative inflections of art, culture and Persian literature and generally the oriental one in Albanian culture and specially in Albanian literature. Such articles are: "The language of hurt or contemplating universe" from Ali Akbar Zijai, "The art of miniature and Bagdad`s School" from Hashim Bikaj, "Rustem and Suhrab of Firdusi" translateing from Feti Mehdiu etc. *************************************************************************** "Perla" http://www.shirazi.org.al Gjithmon? dhe m? af?r lexuesit T? gjith? t? apasionuarit dhe studiuesit e Albanologjis?, Etimologjis?, Let?rsis?, Poezis? Klasike Perse, Iranologjise etj., do t? ken? tani mund?sin? t? shfletojn? k?to materiale n? ?do moment n? (browser -in) e revist?s kulturore-shkencore "Perla", botim i Fondacionit Kulturor "Saadi Shirazi". Ne adresen http://www.shirazi.org.al t? gjith? do t? shfletojn? p?rmbajtjen e revist?s "Perla" duke p?rfshir? k?tu t? gjith? rubrikat e saj. Nj?koh?sisht n? k?t? (browser) do t? keni mund?sin? t? njiheni me t? gjith? numrat e gazet?s letraro-kulturore-informative "Gjylistani". T? apasionuarit dhe studiuesit e let?rsis? dhe t? poezis? klasike Perse do t? munden t? lexojn? poezit? e Naimit "Tehajjulat" n? p?rkthimin n? shqip "?nd?rrime". Do t? lexoni p?rkthimet mjesht?rore t? Rubairave t? Omar Khajamit nga i famshmi Fan S. Noli dhe Hafez Ali Kor?a, p?rkthimet brilante t? Vexhi Buharas? "Gjylistani dhe Bostani" dhe t? disa pjes?ve t? shk?putura nga "Shah-name". Vec k?tyre lexuesi shqiptar ka mund?sin? t? njihet me poezit? e klasik?ve t? m?dhej Iranian? si Hafiz Shirazi, Saadi Shirazi, Firdusi, Rumiu, dhe Rudakiu. Po ashtu studiues t? Albanologjis? do t? ken? mund?sin? t? lexojn? artikuj dhe studime t? fushave t? ndryshme nd?r t? cil?t mund t? p?rmendim: "Em?rtimi i Shqiptar?ve nd?r Shekuj" Prof. dr. Shaban Demiraj "Restaurimi Arkitektonik n? Shqip?ri" Dr: Sulejman Dashi " Eposi Shqiptar i Kreshnik?ve" nga Jorgo Panajoti etj., si dhe t? njihen me studime e hulumtime t? Albanolog?ve dhe Iranolog?ve n? lidhje me ndikimet e nd?rsjella t? artit, kultur?s, dhe let?rsis? Perse dhe m? p?rgjith?sisht asaj orientale n? kultur?n shqiptare dhe n? vecanti n? Let?rsin? Shqipe. Artikuj t? till? si: "Gjuha e zemr?s dhe njohja e Universit" nga Ali Akbar Zijai, "Arti i miniatures dhe shkolla e Bagdadit" nga Hashim Bikaj "Rustemi dhe Suhrabi i Firdusit" p?rkthyer nga Feti Mehdiu etj. jan? disa prej k?tyre studimeve. From kruja at fas.harvard.edu Thu Feb 3 16:30:16 2000 From: kruja at fas.harvard.edu (Eriola Kruja) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 16:30:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] mbi organizaten Message-ID: c'kemi grupi? perpara ca ditesh po flisja me nje anetar te ALBSES. Ne muhabet e siper po diskutonim se si shumica e studenteve aktive ne liste dhe ne aktivitetet tona jane ne Boston, Massachussetts. Gjithashtu mu sugjerua qe kapituj te tjere te hapeshin ne qytete/shtete te tjera kur kishte 5 ose me teper shqiptare. :) (ose nje numer te konsiderueshem) Une mendova qe kjo ishte nje ide e shkelqyer, por gjithashtu mendova qe studentat shqiptare te atyre qyteteve duhet te merrnin vete iniciativen dhe te fillonin nje kapitull. Shume nga ju rrezik nuk e keni menduar kete opsion, por une do ju inkurajoja te benit dicka te tille ne qytetet tuaja pasi kapitulli i Bostonit eshte ende i ri dhe nuk ka pothuajse fare mundesi te organizoje festa ose evenimente te tjera ne qytete jashte Bostonit. Me larg akoma ne te ardhmen do ishte fantastike sikur gjithe keto kapituj ne shtete te ndryshme te mblidheshin nen nje organizate te quajtur ALBSA. (Ne faktikisht jemi ALBSA - Massachusetts Chapter) por mq. jemi te vetem e quajme veten thjesht ALBSA. Sigurisht juve jeni shume te mirepritur te jeni pjese e Massachusetts Chapter :), por nje perhapje ne qytete te tjera do i jepte shume te teper fuqi nje organizate studentore shqiptare jo vetem per aktivitete te ndryshme por edhe si fuqi lobiste ne Amerike per Shqiperine. Tani po e mbyll. Ju lutem me kontaktoni mua ose anetare te tjere ne Boston nq. doni te hapni kapituj ne qytetin tuaj dhe keni nevoje per ndihme, keshilla etj. gjithe te mirat, eriola. PS. Please e-mail me if you want this message in english. From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 3 22:36:49 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 19:36:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Shekulli Message-ID: <20000204033649.8995.qmail@web125.yahoomail.com> ?abej, Kokalari dhe Kadare, qytetar? nderi n? vendlindje Gjirokastra nderon t? m?dhenjt? e saj Olimbi Velaj Eqrem ?abej, Musine Kokalari dhe Ismail Kadare b?hen qytetar? nderi n? vendlindje. Do t? jet? 14 shkurti dita e kuror?zimit t? tre gjirokastrit?ve t? m?dhenj me titullin "Qytetar nderi i Gjirokastr?s". Kryetari i Bashkis? s? Gjirokastr?s, Ylli Asllani, tha dje p?r "Shekullin" se ceremonia e dh?nies s? k?tyre titujve njer?zve m? t? shquar t? qytetit do t? ket? p?rmasat e nj? feste dhe se jo rast?sisht ?sht? zgjedhur dita e 14 shkurtit p?r mbajtjen e saj. Kryebashkiaku tregoi se vitet e fundit shum? qytetar? gjirokastrit? dhe intelektual? t? qytetit kan? propozuar disa her? p?r dh?nien e titullit "Qytetar nderi" k?tyre tre personaliteteve, por vet?m tani erdhi ?asti. Asllani tregoi holl?si p?r aktivitetin, duke p?rmendur se ai ?sht? ideuar nga vet? intelektual?t gjirokastrit?. "Nuk do t? jet? thjesht nj? ceremoni ku k?to personalitete do t? vler?sohen. N? k?t? aktivitet ne do t? shpalosim disa nga projektet tona kulturore q? lidhen me qytetin dhe tradit?n e tij, thot? kryebashkiaku, i cili p?rmend se p?r Gjirokastr?n po hartohet nj? enciklopedi, gj? jo fort e zakonshme kjo p?r qytetet shqiptare. Nd?rsa do t? shpalosen edhe projektet q? ka pushteti lokal p?r rim?k?mbjen e vlerave muzeale dhe monumentale t? qytetit. Kryetari i Bashkis? theksoi se t? gjitha shpenzimet e aktivitetit do t? p?rballohen nga Bashkia dhe se me k?t? aktivitet i hapet rruga nj? serie aktivitetesh t? tjera kulturore q? lidhen kryesisht me figurat m? t? shquara q? ka nxjerr? ky qytet. P?r Musine Kokalarin pas pak jav?sh do t? mbahet edhe nj? simpozium kushtuar jet?s dhe vepr?s s? saj, tha kryebashkiaku i Gjirokastr?s. Nd?rsa Bujar Hudhri, drejtori i sht?pis? botuese "Onufri", tha se n? aktivitetin q? do t? mbahet n? Gjirokast?r kjo sht?pi botuese do t? b?j? nj? paraqitje t? vepr?s s? Kadares?. Afishe me ballinat e librave t? fundit t? Kadares? dhe nj? minipanair i veprave t? tij, po edhe t? ?abejt e Kokalarit, do t? jen? t? pranishme n? vendin ku do t? mbahet aktiviteti. Gjithashtu botues, studjues dhe njer?z t? letrave nga Tirana dhe qytete t? tjera jan? ftuar t? marrin pjes? n? k?t? aktivitet. Dh?nia e titujve "Qytetar nderi" tre personaliteteve t? jet?s shqiptare, ?abejt, Kokalarit dhe Kadares? ?sht? konceptuar thuajse t?r?sisht si nj? spektak?l. K?ng?t popullore, dekori me tri harqe dhe stema e qytetit n? sfond do t? jen? t? pranishme n? koh?n q? aktor?t gjirokastrit? do t? interpretojn? pjes? t? zgjedhura nga veprat e tre t? m?dhenjve gjirokastrit?. Pjes?n qendrore n? interpretim e z?n? pasazhe nga vepra e Kadares?. Do t? p?rurohet me k?t? rast nj? bareliev n? qend?r t? qytetit ku paraqiten t? tria k?to figura, nd?rsa do t? zbulohet p?rmendorja e Eqrem ?abejt p?rpara Universitetit t? Gjirokastr?s, q? mban emrin e tij. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Fri Feb 4 12:29:02 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 09:29:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Quick Reminder Message-ID: <20000204172902.13664.qmail@web801.mail.yahoo.com> Dear list members, Our virtual friends, Mrss. Cana, Blaku, Bardhi and Pula have done an exceptional job with their alb-net.com website. They have even thought of providing Albanians with discussion lists. They have set up lists for Albanians living in or originating from Prishtina and Prizren in Kosova; Korca, Saranda, Shkodra, and Tirana in the Republic of Albania; and Dibra, Shkupi, Struga and Tetova in the Albanian lands of Macedonia. Everybody is invited to join any list and discuss anything they deem relevant. Presently, the Prishtina and Tetova lists have been used heavily, but the others not so much. I thought it would be appropriate to bring this to everybody's attention after concerns were voiced for lack of discussion electronic medium among Albanians, young or old. Sincerely, Asti Pilika __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From besnik at alb-net.com Fri Feb 4 15:30:04 2000 From: besnik at alb-net.com (Besnik Pula) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 15:30:04 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: CFP: Graduate Student Conference - Kosovo: Understanding the Past - Looking Ahead, Budapest, 31.3.-2.4.2000 (fwd) Message-ID: Apeloj te te gjithe studentet shqiptare qe studiojne shkencat shoqerore qe ne menyre serioze ta shqyrtojne mundesine e pjesemarrjes ne konferencen e meposhtme. Eshte shume me rendesi, sepse me kane thene se shume serbe kane aplikuar per konference, e shume pak shqiptare. Per te interesuarit ka menyra te gjehen fonde per te mbuluar shpenzimet e udhetimit e qendrimit. -Besniku Call for Papers Kosovo: Understanding the Past - Looking Ahead Budapest, 31.3.-2.4.2000 International Graduate Students Conference This three day conference seeks to bring together young scholars and graduate students from Serbia and Kosovo, as well as from Southeastern Europe and elsewhere in Europe, working on multinational relations in Kosovo. The conference, seeking to encourage an academic dialogue, is organized by the International Politics Working Group of AEGEE, a European Student organization. The conference will take place at the Central European University in Budapest with the support of the European Youth Foundation and CEU. The following topics will be discussed during the conference: Can there be a common Kosovo history? During the first day contentious issues of Kosovo history will discussed. The emphasis lies on trying to find a common understanding of historical events in Kosovo. Positive Examples of multiethnic coexistence in Southeastern Europe (Vojvodina, etc.)and tools facilitating multiethnic existence. Success and Failure of the first year of International Administration of Kosovo The second day of the conference will touch on the experience of the international administration of Kosovo. Both successes and failures will be subject of discussion. What is the long-term future of Kosovo? The last day of the conference seeks to place Kosovo in the larger Southeast European context and explore the long term development strategies for Kosovo and multinational relations in Southeastern Europe as whole. Structure of the Conference The Conference will be organized around a number of panels and workshops. There will be 1-2 panels per day, followed by workshops on the different topics outlined above. The working language of the conference is English. The conference will take place at the Central European University in Budapest. Participation If you seek to participate as a presenter, please submit an abstract (approx. 500 words) with a short resume. If you are interested only in attending the conference, please submit a short letter of motivation. The deadline for applications is March 3rd, 2000. Participation Fees: Participants from Western Europe: AEGEE Members(room & board): 25 EURO Non-AEGEE Members (room & board): 60 EURO Non-AEGEE Members (Self-Organized): 10 EURO Participants from Central and Eastern Europe: AEEGEE Members (room & board): 15 EURO Non-AEGEE Members(room & board): 30 EURO Non-AEGEE Members (Self-Organized): free Direct all Submissions and Enquiries to kosovo_conference at yahoo.com Or by regular mail to Florian Bieber IRES CEU Nardor utca 9 H-1051 Budapest Hungary Publication As we will seek the publication of a select number of papers presented at the conference, we would request all presenters to submit their paper before or during the conference. For more information on the conference and links on Kosovo see http://www.aegee.org/kosovo/ From aalibali at yahoo.com Sat Feb 5 23:13:45 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 20:13:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Vlachs in Albania Message-ID: <20000206041345.11705.qmail@web120.yahoomail.com> Albania is home to the second largest Aromanian community in the Balkans. Aromanians in Albania inhabit mostly the southern region of the country, especially around Gjirokast?r and P?rmeti but Aromanians could be found as far north as Elbasan in central Albania (Winnifrith, Shattered Eagles 58-9). Estimates for their number run around 100,000 people with some researchers giving a high of 200,000. This is also the only country where Aromanians amount to a relatively significant percentage of the total population, two percent. The civil unrest in Albania from two years ago, and the current influx of Albanian refugees from Kosovo made it very hard to find any current information of the Aromanian community. I was unable to find information about mass-media in Aromanian which I know existed prior to the installation of the Communist government in 1945. I was able to find however, in a long list of Albanian NGO's (Non-Governmental Organization) numerous cultural Aromanian organizations. Since the colapse of the Communist regime in Albanian in the early 1990's there has been a resurgence of Aromanian nationalism (for an indepth study please visit The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening). This has led in turn to the recognition of the Aromanian community as one of the national minorities in the new Albanian constitution. The community as a group has benefitted from a series of political, economical, and social factors, specific to Albania. The relative isolation of the country and its lack of economic development has kept many of the Aromanian villages isolated and has allowed for a better preservation of their language and culture. Also, even during communism, the Albanian government did not follow on the foot-steps of the Greek government with a policy of ethnic homogenization. Furthermore, the healthy state of the Aromanian community in Albania is due in part to religious differences. Aromanians are in their vast majority Orthodox, while Albanians, who form the majority of the population, are for the most part Muslims. This has led, however, to some complications since the Greek government bases its claims of the number of ethnic Greeks residing in Albania on religious grounds rather then ethnic or linguistic. Therefore, they claim that most of the 400,000 Orthodox in the country are ethnic Greeks (Winnifrith, Shattered Eagles, 68). As Brailsford put it in 1906 when he was describing the region: "they (the Aromanians) are not numerous in comparison with the Macedonians, or even the Albanians. But without them the Greeks would cut a sorry figure" (187). Some go as far as saying that half of the Orthodox believers in Albania are in fact Aromanians, but this might be an exaggeration. Although Aromanians have been promised education in their native language this has yet to materialize. In the past few years Albania has been in a disastrous economic, social, and political state. Three years ago when the pyramid skims collapsed, the government lost control of the situation, and a state of anarchy ruled the country. It was necessary for the UN Peace Keeping Troop to intervene to restore legal order. To make matter worst, just as the Albanian government was reinstating its authority over much of the territory of the country and the economy begun to show the first signs of recovery, the conflict in Kosovo started. This meant an overwhelming influx of Albanian refugees, which in turn have created further delays in any meaningful implementation of the legislation regarding the education in minority languages, including Aromanian. Unlike ethnic Greeks who have the strong support of the government in Athens, the Aromanians in Albania have so far lacked a similar support from the government in Bucharest. This, however, seems to be changing as Romanian official have begun to shown an increased interest in the situation of the Aromanian community. The strongest evidence in this regard has been the decision of the Romanian Government to sent troops in Albania as part of the peace keeping operation. The only condition put forward by Romania for its participation was that the troops would be deployed in the southern region of the country, in an area with the largest concentration of Aromanians. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Sat Feb 5 23:19:33 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 20:19:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Christianity and Islam in SE Europe Message-ID: <20000206041933.12309.qmail@web120.yahoomail.com> A paper on Christianity and Islam in Southeastern Europe can be found at http://wwics.si.edu/PROGRAMS/REGION/ees/occasional/frazee47.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Sat Feb 5 19:45:20 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 16:45:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Koha Jone Message-ID: <20000206004520.20751.qmail@web121.yahoomail.com> Greket ndertojne Egnatian, shqiptaret nuk kane projekte per Korridorin 8 Shqiperia e ka braktisur ndertimin e Korridorit 8. Firmat e huaja kane tejkaluar afatet. Ministria e Transportit, asnje sanksion ligjor . Ndersa ne vitin 2001 shteti helen do te prese shiritin e pwrurimit te "Odhos Egnatia", homologu shqiptar ende nuk ka filluar punimet e paraleles shqiptare qe perben Korridorin 8-te Gjergji Erebara Greket kane marre mbi 450 milione Euro nga Bashkimi Europian per ndertimin e nje autostrade nga Gumenica, ne Detin Jon, deri ne Stamboll, duke kaluar prane portit me te madh grek, Selanik. Athina e ka emeruar autostraden e pare ne territorin e saj si "Odhos Egnatia", cuditerisht dhe jo pa qellim, duke perdorur te njwjtin emer me rrugen e vjeter romake, qe nuk ka kaluar kurre ne territorin helen, fragmente te se ciles jane zbuluar ne te gjithe Shqiperine e mesme. Per me teper, fragmente te kesaj rruge u shkaterruan pak muaj me pare prane Librazhdit nga firma Maqedone "Mavropi", pasi "pengonin" ndertimin e autostrades. Romaket ishin shume te interesuar per lidhjen e dominimeve te tyre ne lindje me kryeqytetin e perandorise. Per kete arsye, nga Durresi deri ne Kostandinopojen e atehershme ndertuan nje rruge me emrin "Egnatia". Rruga ishte e shtruar me kalldrem dhe kishte gjeresi mesatare 6 metra. Ne mesjete Venedikasit interesoheshin per rruget lidhese me lindjen dhe per kete arsye kerkonin me cdo kusht dominimin e porteve me te rendesishme ne bregdetin Adriatik. Keshtu Durresi u dominua nga venecianet deri ne fund te shekullit te 16. Por te gjitha keto i perkasin historise. Kater muaj me pare, gjate Panairit te dyte te Levantes ne Tirane, Komisari i panairit Francesko Divela, dha ne menyre jozyrtare alarmin mbi punimet per Korridorin Lindje-Perendim te njohur nga te gjithe si Korridori 8. "E ndersa jemi duke diskutuar Korridorin Paneuropian nr. 8, qe duhet te lidhe detin Adriatik me detin e Zi, nepermjet rrugeve te Shqiperise, Maqedonise dhe Bullgarise, ne Greqi jane duke perfunduar paralelen, nga Gumenica ne Stamboll. Duke kaluar nga porti i Selanikut, aktualisht me i privilegjuar per levizjen nga, dhe per ne Ballkan", ka deklaruar Divela. Ceshtja u alarmua edhe me shume pas promemories qe qeveria Italiane i dergoi qeverise Shqiptare nepermjet ministrit te saj per Tregtine e Jashtme, Umberto Ranieri. "Pse i vononi punimet per Korridorin 8", pyesnin Italianet qeverine Shqiptare. Nepermjet gjuhes diplomatike, te njwjten gje e kerkoi edhe Ambasadori amerikan ne Tirane. "Mos u merrni me zgjatimet, por me Korridorin", tha Limpreht gjate nje takimi me ministren shqiptare te Transportit, Ingrid Shuli. Skandali ngeci ne Tiranen zyrtare gjate veres se kaluar me lajmin se dosja e perpiluar per ndertimin e Korridorit 8 ka humbur. Lajmi u pergenjeshtua zyrtarisht, por dosja, e cila mendohet te kete humbur, nuk u be kurre publike. Ekspertet shqiptare te Rrugeve, punonjes te Drejtorise se Pergjithshme pohojne jozyrtarisht se ndertimi i Korridorit 8 eshte braktisur perfundimisht. "Ne nuk drejtojme politiken e rrugeve apo te Korridoreve, por merremi me ndertimin e segmenteve, te cilat na i ngarkojne", thone zyrtaret me te larte te DPR-se. Korridoret dhe interesat ballkanike Greqia sheh se ndertimi i Korridorit 8 do te sjelle zhvleresimin e flotes se saj detare tregtare Ceshtja eshte se vende te ndryshme interesohen per ndertimin sa me pare te korridoreve te ndryshme per lidhjen e Lindjes me Perendimin. Dy nga keto Korridore kalojne ne vendin tone. Italia interesohet per ndertimin e Korridorit 8 dhe zgjerimin e portit shqiptar te Durresit, pa te cilin vete korridori nuk ka kuptim. Greqia nga ana e saj sheh se ndertimi i ketij Korridori do te sjelle uljen e punes ne Portin e Selanikut, si dhe zhvleresimin e flotes se saj detare qe konsiderohet si nje nga flotat me te rendesishme tregtare ne detin Mesdhe. Ne kete menyre, ne plan te pare del perplasja mes Italise dhe Greqise. Greqia nuk mund ta perballoje Italine ne Bashkimin Europian. Kjo sepse Italia mbulon me financim 15 per qind te arkes se perbashket, ndersa Greqia eshte vetem perfituese. Athina konsiderohet nga diplomacia gjithashtu si vendi qe perfiton me shume nga Bashkimi Europian dhe i hap me shume telashe atij. Ne kete menyre, te dy vendet perplasen ne Tirane. Qeverise Shqiptare i duhet te zgjedhe keshtu prioritetin mes dy Korridoreve. Zoti Ilir Meta, ne ate kohe nenkryeminister, deklaroi se per vendin tone te dy Korridoret do te jene prioritare dhe se mes tyre nuk do te kete pergjedhje. Por faktikisht vemendja e qeverise Shqiptare eshte perqendruar ne sektoret e autostradave jugore. Ish-ministri i Puneve Publike dhe Transportit, Gaqo Apostoli, nenshkruajti kater marreveshje me vlere te pergjithshme prej rreth 50 milione dollare ne tre ditet e fundit te mandatit te tij. Tre prej tyre kishin te benin me segmente te ndryshme te autostradave jugore. Gjithcka vendoset ne Ministrine e Puneve te Jashtme te drejtuar nga socialdemokrati Milo dhe ne Ministrine e Puneve Publike dhe Transportit, ministri e cila gjate dy viteve te fundit eshte kontrolluar gjithashtu nga partia Socialdemokrate. Edhe gjate ndarjes se fundit te MPPT-se ne dy ministri, Drejtoria e Pergjithshme e Rrugeve kaloi ne menyre te cuditshme nen vartesine e Ministrise se Transportit drejtuar nga socialdemokratja Shuli. Punimet ne Korridorin 8 ne tre vendet ku ai do te kaloje sipas Bankes Boterore kane ecur me mire ne Maqedoni. Per te kontrolluar cilesine e punimeve maqedonasit kane ndjekur nje skeme te thjeshte: Firmat sipermarrese i kane ndertuar autostradat ne baze te kontratave te vecanta me nga pese kilometra autostrade secila. Pasi kontrollohet cilesia e punimeve ne pese kilometrat e para, vihet ne zbatim kontrata per pese kilometrat e tjerw. Fillimisht e njwjta skeme u perdor edhe ne vendin tone ne ndertimin e autostrades Tirane-Durres, pjese e domosdoshme e Korridorit 8. Ne Maqedoni autostradat u ndertuan me gjashte korsi, nga dy korsi per cdo krah si dhe dy korsi ndihmese. Ne Shqiperi plane te tilla ka vetem per autostraden Tirane-Durres. Pak histori mbi Korridoret Nje samit i madh i vendeve Europiane plus atyre te Europes lindore si dhe Turqise u mbajt ne vitin 1994 ne Helsinki. Ne te u caktuan afatet si dhe rregullat per ndertimin e Korridoreve. Me kembenguljen e Gjermanise dhe Italise, Korridori 8 u vu ne plan te pare. Greqia kerkoi qe Korridori te kalonte nga territori i saj, por kerkesa u hodh poshte pasi kjo gje linte jashte Maqedonine. Diplomacia e sheh Maqedonine si pike kyce per stabilitetin politik te Ballkanit, per kete arsye ky shtet eshte me i privilegjuari persa i perket investimeve. Te njwjten gje Ambasadori grek ne Tirane e kerkoi ne menyre joprotokollare ne Komisionin Parlamentar te Ekonomise. Disa nga rregullat per ndertimin e Korridoreve ishin: . Korridoret jane rruge nderlidhese jokonkuruese mes tyre. . Nje korridor duhet te kaloje minimalisht ne dy kryeqytete, (ne rastin tone Tirane dhe Shkup). . Nevojitet nje pike karburanti per cdo 40 kilometra korridor dhe nje qender spitalore per cdo 20 kilometra. Persa i perket afateve u tha se Korridori me te gjitha aspektet e tij, perfshire Gazsjellesin dhe Naftesjellesin, ne rastin tone do te perfundoje se ndertuari ne vitin 2020. Pervec ndertimit te linjave automobilistike apo hekurudhore, Korridori nenkupton edhe perafrimin e legjislacionit fiskal, apo doganor te vendeve pjesemarrese. Shqiperia dhe korridoret Marreveshja e pare per te ndertuar nje Korridor ne vendin tone u firmos ne vitin 1988 nga qeveria e atehershme komuniste. Korridori kalonte pergjate te gjithe bregdetit Dalmat-Ilir deri ne Greqi. Projekti u braktis per shkak te luftes ne Ish-Jugosllavi si dhe nga kundershtimi i qeverise italiane. Aktualisht, nuk ka nje projekt konkret per nje Korridor te tille. Per ndertimin e Korridorit 8 jane angazhuar me financime nje sere vendesh ku Italia ze vendin me te rendesishem ne grante, ndersa Banka Boterore ze vendin me te rendesishem ne kredi. Faktikisht punimet per Korridorin 8 kane filluar vetem ne segmentin Tirane-Durres, ku qeveria italiane ka sponsorizuar 17 milione dollare. Te gjitha investimet e tjera per kete Korridor, ose jane grante te qeverive te interesuara per kete ceshtje, ose bejne pjese ne programin e Bankes Boterore mbi Rruget Nacionale. Projekti kap shifren e 66 milione dollareve, por deri ne muajin tetor te vitit te kaluar jane disbursuar vetem 7,7 milione dollare. Sipas materialeve te shperndara nga Banka Boterore, Projekti ka per qellim te rihabilitoje dhe te ndertoje segmente te reja ne segmentin Lindje-Perendim-Veri, pa kaluar ne Jug. Ne baze te projektit do te rihabilitohen, apo ndertohen gjithsej 90 kilometra rruge. 60 kilometra i perkasin Korridorit, ndersa 30 te tjera jane segmente te ndryshme te ndertuara nga Fushe-Kruja ne Lezhe. Segmenti Rrogozhine-Elbasan po ndertohet aktualisht nga firma turke Behashe dhe ka gjatesine 20 kilometra rruge. Rruga do te kete gjwresi 9,5 deri ne 11 metra pra do te jete me dy korsi. Segmenti Elbasan-Librazhd eshte ende ne pergjedhje te sipermarresit, ndersa financimi eshte marre persiper nga BERZH. Librazhd-Qukes i eshte ngarkuar firmes maqedone Mavropi. Marreveshja ka vleren e 15 milione dollareve. Segmenti i fundit Qukes-Qafethane financohet nga fondi kuvaitjan me 8,5 milione dollare. Persa i perket te ashtuquajturit Korridor Veri-Jug, punimet per te kane filluar gjithashtu ne Durres. Firma Greke Sarandopullos ka marre persiper ndertimin e segmentit Durres Rrogozhine, me kater kalime dhe burime specialistesh dhe zyrtaresh qe s'pranojne identifikim thone se ne vend te ndertoje Korridorin shqiptar, ajo paguhet nga Greqia dhe qeveria shqiptare. Nga e para per te sabotuar punimet e ndertimit, kurse nga ajo shqiptare per tejkalimin e afateve. Kontrata mes Qeverise Shqiptare dhe firmes ka mbaruar me date 19 janar 2000. Ne baze te kontrates Sarandopullos detyrohet t'i paguaje shtetit shqiptar mbi 20 mije dollare per cdo dite vonese. Por firma greke thote se vonesat jane shkaktuar nga puna e dobet e shtetit shqiptar ne shpronesimet e tokes, mbi te cilen do te kaloje autostrada. Shpronesimet per kete arsye jane ne ngarkim te Ministrise se Bujqesise. Segmenti tjeter Rrogozhine-Lushnje eshte nje kontrate e nenshkruar gjithashtu ne ditet e fundit te punes se tij si minister nga ana e zotit Gaqo Apostoli. Kontrata ka nje vlere prej 17 milione Eurosh per 18 kilometra autostrade. Gjeresia mesatare do te jete 23 metra dhe rruga do te kete kater kalime. Marreveshje tjeter qeveria ka nenshkruar me firmen "Mavropi" per 8 kilometra autostrade nga Kakavija ne Gjirokaster. Ekziston edhe nje marreveshje per nje segment autostrade nga Kapshtica ne Korce. E gjithe kjo do te thote se punimet per Korridorin 8 nuk kane filluar ende ne vendin tone, pasi te gjitha punimet ne gjurmet e projektit bejne pjese ne nje program qe nuk merret posacerisht me Korridorin, por me rruget kombetare ne pergjithesi. (Projekti i Bankes Boterore) Firmat ndertuese manipulojne ndertimin e rrugeve Firmat e huaja ndertuese qe merren me ndertimin e rrugeve ne vendin tone kane shenuar vonesa te jashtezakonshme ne fillimin dhe perfundimin e punimeve. Pothuajse te gjitha ato akuzohen nga ekspertet shqiptare, por edhe nga supervizoret, kompanite e tjera qe mbikeqyrin cilesine e punimeve, per pune te dobet. Dhe si kane ecur ato midis "binareve" shqiptare? Firma greke Sarandopullos i filloi punimet vetem nje vit pas nenshkrimit te kontrates dhe megjithwse afati i perfundimit i ka kaluar disa here i vazhdon dhe i nderpret ato sa here te deshiroje. Ne veren e vitit te kaluar Sarandopulos nenshkruajti nje marreveshje private me firmen tjeter qe merret me ndertimin e rrugeve, italianen Falcione. Marreveshja konsistonte ne bashkimin e makinerive me qellim shpejtimin e punimeve. Firma greke akuzohet gjithashtu, per cilesi te dobet te punimeve. Ekspertet shqiptare thone se pjeset e asfaltuara te autostrades Durres-Rrogozhine jane shtruar me nje deri ne dy shtresa asfalti me pak. Asfalti eshte nje nga pjeset me te kushtueshme ne ndertimin e rrugeve. Zakonisht ekspertet e llogarisin me 51 mije leke te vjetra per cdo meter katror. Sipas standarteve europiane shtresa e asfaltit duhet te jete pese centimetra. Me pergjysmimin e shtreses se asfaltit ne 20 kilometra rruge mund te fitohen 500 mije deri ne 1 milion dollare. Gjithashtu Sarandopullos akuzohet se e ka ndertuar rrugen me zhavorr lumi dhe jo me gure mali, gje qe shkel kushtet teknike. "Guret e lumit per shkak te rumbullaktesise nuk arrijne te zene vend, kwshtu qe rruga e ka jeten deri dy here me tw shkurter se zakonisht", argumentojne specialiste te drejtorise se rrugeve. Nderkohe, supervizori i caktuar per mbikeqyrjen e firmes greke ka deklaruar se eshte shume i pakenaqur me cilesine e punimeve. Supervizori pranoi gjithashtu se vonesat ne shumicen e rasteve jane shkaktuar nga shteti shqiptar. Firma turke Behashe i filloi punimet 11 muaj pas dates se caktuar dhe vetem 9 muaj nga skadimi i kontrates, ne fillim te vitit te ardhshem. Drejtues te kesaj firme si dhe perfaqesues te qeverise se Ankarase deklaruan diten e fillimit te punimeve se vonesat jane shkaktuar nga kriza e Tiranes me 14 shtator '98, si dhe nga lufta ne Kosove e vitit te kaluar. Ato premtuan gjithashtu se do t'i mbaronin punimet brenda afatit te caktuar, mirepo ky kufi eshte shkelur disa here dhe asnje "gjemb" nuk i ka hyre firmes turke qe se bashku me homologet e tjera vetem kerkojne te zhvasin fonde shtese per te paguar demtimet e "gushteve" te shtetit shqiptar. Firma maqedone "Granit" i ka filluar gjithashtu punimet per segmentin Rrogozhine-Lushnje me 8 muaj vonese. Ajo akuzohet se eshte perdoruesja me e madhe e zhavorrit qe 9 makineri perpunuese marrin nga shtrati i lumit Shkumbin, kur shume prej shfrytezuesve te ketij lumi nuk zoterojne lejet perkatese dhe e shfrytezojne lumin ne menyre te jashteligjshme. Kjo firme duhet ta dorezoje autostraden e perfunduar me 15 prill 2000. "Graniti" pergatiti edhe nje feste te madhe peruruese me gusht te vitit te kaluar. Festa nuk u realizua pasi disa nga qeveritaret shqiptare te ftuar nuk pranuan te marrin pjese ne kete reklame per shtyp. BEI: Shqiperia s'di te thithe investimet Disa dite me pare Banka Evropiane e Investimeve ka dhene nje deklarate, nepermjet te ciles e konsideron teresisht te paafte shtetin shqiptar per te thithur investimet e huaja per korridoret dhe rruget. "Rritja e investimeve dhe shpejtimi i ndertimit te autostrades Tirane-Durres si dhe i Korridorit 8 varet nga konsolidimi i shtetit shqiptar si dhe nga ekzistenca atje e nje administrate te afte. Projektet per Ballkanin arrijne ne rreth 9 miliarde Euro dhe bashkesia nderkombetare eshte e gatshme ta mbeshtese Shqiperine ne rast se qeveria e saj eshte e afte te levize nga vendi", deklaroi Walter Cernoia, drejtor i departamentit per Europen Qendrore dhe Lindore ne BEI, duke sqaruar se banka ka ngritur sakaq nje grup te posacem pune per investimet ne Ballkan. Projektet e saj ne rrjetin energjetik shqiptar, ne rehabilitimin e Portit te Durresit si dhe per vete Korridorin 8 kapin shifren e 68 milione Eurove. Shuma te tjera parash jane mbi tryeze, por per t'i terhequr ato nevojiten projekte konkrete strategjike. Edhe me pare BEI e ka akuzuar Shqiperine si te paafte per thithjen e fondeve dhe mbikeqyrjen e investimeve. Per portin e Durresit eshte interesuar njekohesisht qeveria italiane si dhe Opec, Organizata Boterore e Naftes si edhe Shtetet e Bashkuara te Amerikes. Te vetmit qe vazhdojne indiferencen e tyre jane qeveritaret shqiptare, ne dosjet e te cileve nuk duken projekte prioritare. Projektet e rrugeve, kredite dhe sa ka thithur Shqiperia Projekti i Rrugeve Kombetare, 66 milione dollare. 25 milione kredi nga BB 35 milione bashkefinancime nga Italia, Kuvajti, BERZH, Phare. Pa financim kane mbetur 6 milione dollare. Te thithura nga Shqiperia, 7,7 milione deri me tetor '99. Projekti i Rrugeve Rurale, 33,6 milione dollare. 15 milione kredi nga BB, 16,2 milione nga Italia. Pa financim 2,4 milione dollare. Te thithura nga Shqiperia 12,9 milione me tetor '99. Projekti i mirembajtjes se Rrugeve, me vlere ende te pacaktuar. Kredia nga BB kap shifren e 25 milione dollareve. Faza tjeter e punes fillon me maj 2000. Projekti i Portit te Durresit, me vlere 23 milione dollare. 10 milione jane kredi nga BB, 12 milione nga Fondi Opek dhe Italia. Te thithura nga shteti shqiptar 1,1 milion deri me tetor '99. Gjithsej te premtuara: 144,6 milione dollare. Te thithura prej shtetit shqiptar: 21,7 milione dollare. 06 February __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Sun Feb 6 15:41:24 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 15:41:24 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Botanics - Saxifraga grieselbachii Message-ID: Copyright 2000 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail Ltd. Sunday Mail February 6, 2000, Sunday SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 9 Seven Days LENGTH: 1388 words HEADLINE: GARDENING - ALPINE SPRING BYLINE: Bill Chudziak BODY: THE calendar says Spring begins on March 26, but there are plants that ignore that and start growing much sooner. Early Alpines herald the coming spring with enthusiasm, yet they occupy a tiny area of gardens. In fact, many gardeners ignore them - which is a puzzle to me because they are easy to grow, easy to acquire and give a huge sense of satisfaction. One of the most spectacular of the early Alpines is Saxifraga grieselbachii, which comes from the mountains of Greece and Albania. The peculiar flower spikes of the early saxifrages are intriguing, with their mixture of silver-coloured rosettes and arching spikes. They form perfectly symmetrical rosettes of silver-encrusted tiles that are so fascinating, it seems a shame when the central flower spike beings to elongate. This will eventually grow to about three inches, making the plant look like something from The Day of the Triffids. The pale-green flower stem has ascending bracts that look like small hairy tongues, beneath which are the pink flowers. Although this plant is resistant to frost, it dislikes the winter wet and is best given protection from our damp soggy weather with a pane of glass supported on four small canes. Even more impressive is Saxifraga longifolia. The silver rosettes remain close to the ground and will eventually throw up a two-foot tall flower pyramid which supports hundreds of tiny white stars on stems that are like hair. A variety called Saxifraga Tumbling Waters is one of my favourites and is almost twice the size of longifolia. It performs best when grown on its side so water will drain away from the rosette. Flowering at the same time is Iris Katherine Hodgkins. It has blooms of a typical Iris shape, about an inch across, and with a distinctive cross of pale turquoise, sky blue, slate and primrose. By keeping winter moisture away from the bulb's surface, air is allowed to pass close to the bulb and regular flowering will be guaranteed. The bulb also benefits from deep planting and should be encased in a layer of sharp grit when first planted. It may seem like a lot of effort for one bulb but, once you see them in flower, you will want to plant more. Snake's Head fritillarys or Crown Imperials, which come from the Fritillaria family, are a similarly rewarding plant. They are just the tip of the iceberg in a plant family that is filled with many fascinating bulbs. Fritillaria michailovskyii is an easy bulb to flower but is one of those plants that you either love or hate. The podgy bells hang from the top of slender grey foliage and are two- tone yellowy-gold blending to dark chocolate at the petal tips. Some gardeners dismiss these brown-flowered plants as of botanical interest only, but I think they are wonderful and hold a magical curiosity that demands closer inspection. Another winter gem is the Pasque flower, Pulsatilla vulgaris. The goblet-shaped flowers are a good two inches across and are a deep burgundy red in the best forms, which look particularly beautiful when backlit by the morning sun. When the sun warms the flowers they gradually expand to a funnel shape, revealing their dark central eye. The effect is intensified by the blooms' surrounding collar of feathery foliage which sits around the neck of the flower like an Elizabethan ruff made of silver threads. Growing Alpines is easy as long as you add plenty of drainage to the soil, such as horticultural grit and sharp sand, as well as bonemeal in the spring. The amount of compost that you should add to the planting soil is debatable. Alpines fall into two broad categories; those that prefer drainage over moisture and vice versa. One of the greatest Alpinists, Reginald Farrer, believed that as alpines enjoy rich living more than any other plant, it is worth mixing in some humus with the grit. This richer planting mix will retain more moisture and is best used with Alpine varieties that prefer the cooler soil. Primroses are the ideal candidate as they often grow wild in woods near to streams, but their Himalayan cousins have far more spectacular blooms and flower earlier. The best of the early Himalayan primroses are Primula bhutanica and Primula sonchifolia. Their rosettes of apple green foliage are crinkly to the touch and finely dusted with floury powder called farina. Most good garden centres should have the plants mentioned but, if not, try Christie's Nursery, Downfield, Westmuir, Kirriemuir, Angus, DD8 5LP, or Jack Drake, Inshriach Alpine Nursery, Aviemore, Invernesshire, PH22 1QS. Both supply top-quality alpines through mail order. PROBLEMS The Beechgrove Garden's Carolyn Spray answer all your questions Q I HAVE terrible trouble each year growing my favourite plants, Delphinium and Hosta. As soon as they poke their shoots through the soil, they are attacked by hordes of slugs and snails. What do you suggest? A THERE are several different kinds of slugs and snails but the most usual garden culprit is the common slug. If you don't like chemicals, you can try Snail Ban, which is a sharp material slugs and snails won't cross over when it's put around plants. The favourite slug killer for gardeners though is Methiocarb, sold in your garden centre as slug gard. This is an effective solution for slug and snail problems, and if used according to the instructions, you should be able to look forward to magnificent Delphiniums this year. Q ON a recent holiday abroad I noticed that exotic plants seem to grow like weeds. One I particularly like is Strelitzia (Bird of Paradise). As the plants are very expensive to buy, can I grow them from seed? A BIRD of Paradise is a stunning flower but is really a conservatory plant in Scotland. It is easy to grow from seed and there is now a whole range of these exotic plant seeds available from Thomson & Morgan (phone 01473 688588 for stockists). Strelitzia is easy to grow but can take several years to give you those eye catching orange and royal blue flowers you so admire. Well worth the wait, though. IF you have a gardening query, write to: Carolyn Spray, Seven Days Magazine, Sunday Mail, 40 Anderston Quay, Glasgow G3 8DA. THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS IN THE GARDEN IF the wet weather is keeping you indoors why not build yourself some plant containers using old fish boxes? They shouldn't cost anything as your local chippy will be only too glad to get rid of them. Once cleaned, use a heat gun to roughen the outer surface and create long stone- like depressions. Slap on a few coats of grey masonry paint - you can mix this with sand to give a stone textured effect - and punch three one-inch diameter, equally spaced holes in the base. Once in place, pour an inch of grit into the base. Top it up with a 50- 50 mix of John Innes No.2 compost and sharp grit, and pop in your plants, which will enjoy the good drainage and rich living. Once you have arranged your plants, dress the soil with more grit around the crown of the plants to help with drainage. The troughs can be used for patio plants and summer bedding, but they look especially effective if you use herbs or alpines dressed with grit. However, you must remember to tailor the compost mix to the plants. The beauty of these lightweight troughs is that they look quite rustic and authentic. You can use them strategically, to mark a pathway, or sit them next to your front door. They are a great solution to changing the feel of your garden with minimum effort and little cost. Back indoors, some of your house plants may be starting to look tired as they feel the effects of the dark winter days. If you feel your plants are suffering more than others, you should move them to a better spot. I rotate my house plants every week to keep them growing evenly. Aphids and whitefly can build up unnoticed and can cause real trouble during the winter. You could spray with Bio-Naturen, which is also safe for bees and ladybirds, but even better are a few pure soap flakes in tepid water sprayed over the plant. This may leave a white residue on the foliage but it won't harm the plant. You can also spray the plant daily with water. This soaking will make the plant happier and keep baddies like scale and aphids away. From besnik at alb-net.com Sun Feb 6 16:05:53 2000 From: besnik at alb-net.com (Besnik Pula) Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 16:05:53 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Christianity and Islam in SE Europe In-Reply-To: <20000206041933.12309.qmail@web120.yahoomail.com> Message-ID: Te dashur miq, e lexova artikullin nga Charles Frazee te dhene ne adresen e meposhtme. Shkrimi ishte tipik i shkolles Orientale. Pohimi "The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans was yet another chapter in the long history of battles between those who fought under the standard of the cross and those who enlisted under the crescent" eshte nje pershkrim mjaft tendencioz, per te mos thene nje shtremberim i plote i historise se marredhenieve fetare ne Ballkan. Ne te ka edhe pershkrime tendencioze te fakteve, sic eshte kjo: "Since reaya means ?flock,? it has often been judged a contemptuous name for Christians and Jews." Kjo eshte plotesisht e pavertete, kur "reaya" (raja) nenkuptonte te gjithe popullin qe nuk ishte pjese e klases sunduese (askeri), pa dallime fetare apo etnike. Eshte e ditur se me ardhjen e osmaneve ne Ballkan, nuk ka pasur asnjehere konflikt qe ka pase karakter eksluziv fetar. Madje eshte e ditur se shume prijes ballkanik te krishtere (shqiptare, sllave dhe te tjere) jane bere aleate te osmaneve gjate pushtimeve te tyre te Ballkanit, e qe perandoria i ka njohur si te zote te territoreve te veta duke i pranuar ata si vazale. I tille ka qene edhe vete Gjon Kastrioti, i ati i Gjergj Kastriotit. Ndersa sa i perket cifuteve, eshte e ditur se shume nga cifute qe u perzune nga pjesa perendimore e Evropes (ne vecanti nga Spanja) gjeten strehim dhe u vendosen ne Perandorine Osmane. Personalisht, atyre qe jane te interesuar ne marredheniet fetare ne Ballkan gjate periudhes osmane ju kisha rekomanduar literature tjeter, te mbeshtetur ne studime me te mirefillta dhe me te thella. -Besniku >A paper on Christianity and Islam in Southeastern >Europe can be found at > >http://wwics.si.edu/PROGRAMS/REGION/ees/occasional/frazee47.html From pulab at gusun.georgetown.edu Sun Feb 6 23:08:37 2000 From: pulab at gusun.georgetown.edu (Besnik Pula) Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2000 23:08:37 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Registration form Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 13:48:39 +0100 From: "Altin Ilirjani" To: Subject: [ALPSA-Info] Registration form ------ Albanian Political Science Association------ Dear All: I am happy to inform you that since the public announcement of the information about ALPSA and Tirana Summer School, many Albanian graduate students and political scientists have expressed interest in either joining ALPSA or participating in the Summer School. Now, we have almost 20 members in this list, and I expect others to join soon once we become active. I think that now we can move to the next stage: registration of the Albanian Political Science Association in a court in Tirana/Albania. With the advice of some friends of mine in Tirana, who are laywers dealing with these things, I have prepared a draft statute for the association and other documents we need to deposit in the court. The statutes have been prepared based on the constitutions of the American Political Science Association and the Canadian Political Science Assoc. However, this constitution is only provisional as the final one will have to be approved by the general meeting in Tirana, which will take place during the Tirana summer school. I will send the statute for comments to everyone who wants to review it before depositing it to the court. It is important that we form a temporary board which will take care of the bussines of the association until its organs are elected in summer. If you want to become a member of ALPSA or a board member please complete the form at the end of this email and return it to me. I will send you a copy of the statutes for review and for your records. Because that only the general meeting in summer can decide on membership fees, membership will be free for now, and all registration expenses will be covered through a grant from OSI Budapest. If you decide not to become a member of ALPSA, this will have no effect on your application/participation in the Tirana summer school. Please pass this info on everyone who could be interested. Regards, Altin. ?--------------REGISTRATION FORM FOR ALPSA------------------ Name surname: Mailing address: Email: Current University/Institution: Education: Field(s) of specialization: Do you want to become a member of ALPSA?: Do you want to become a board member ?: Passport or ID number: [This is needed only for those who become board members). ?------------------------------END OF THE REGISTRATION FORM-------------------- --- end forwarded text From pilika at yahoo.com Mon Feb 7 10:55:30 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 07:55:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Graduate Student Workshop Message-ID: <20000207155530.6082.qmail@web803.mail.yahoo.com> > > The Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and > East-Central Europe and the > Southeast European Study Group > invite you to the > Second Annual Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Student > Workshop on Southeastern Europe > > February 11 and 12, 2000 > Center for European Studies, Harvard > Univeristy > Lower Auditorium > 27 Kirkland Street, > Cambridge > > > > Friday, February 11, 2000 > > 2:00 p.m. Welcome Address, Dimitris Keridis, > Director, The Kokkalis Program > > 2:15 p.m. History and Nationalism > Chair: Cemal Kafadar, Harvard University > Isa Blumi, New York University > The Dynamics of Identity: Albanians in the > Post Ottoman Balkans > Vangelis Kechriotis, University of Athens > Greek Orthodox, Greek Ottomans or just > Greeks? > Theories of Ethnic Coexistence on the Eve > of the Fall of the Ottoman > Empire > Steven Mavromihalis, Stanford University > Nations Beyond Borders: The Role of > Diasporas in Building Modern > States > > 4:00 p.m. Break > > 4:30 p.m. Ethnicity, Identity and Conflict > Chair: Monica Toft, Harvard University > Martin Dimitrov, Stanford University > Credible Commitments, Minorities, and the > Threat of Ethnic Violence: > The Preservation of Ethnic Cooperation in > Bulgaria, 1989-1992 > Vasiliki Neofotistos, Harvard University > Ethnic Identity in the Post-Socialist > World: > The Creation of Difference in Skopje, > Macedonia > Gabriela Volfova, Bilkent University > Identity and Democracy in Turkey in the > late 1990s > > > > > > > Kokkalis Graduate Student Workshop > Schedule, Continued > > Saturday, February 12, 2000 > > 9:00 a.m. Religion > Chair: Vangelis Calotychos, New York > University > Effie Fokas, London School of Economics > Greek Orthodoxy and European Identity > Neophytos Loizides, University of Toronto > Nationalism and Religion in the Balkans: > The Case of Turkey in Comparative > Perspective > Sokol Kondi, City University of New York > Religion and Ethnic Identity in the > Balkans > > 10:45 a.m. Break > > 11:00 a.m. Anthropology > Chair: Larry Wolff, Boston College > Bojan Aleksov, Central European University > The Evolution of the Anthroponymic System > in Belgrade over the Course > of the Twentieth Century as a Reflection > of Popular Mentalit? > Maja Brkljacic, University of Zagreb > The Ritual of the Funeral of Josip Broz > Tito > Yannis Manos, Hamburg University > Perceptions and Strategies of Dance > Tradition in the Region of > Florina, > Northwestern Greek Macedonia > > 1:oo p.m. Break > > 2:30 p.m. Transition > Chair: Dimitris Keridis, Harvard > University > Florian Bieber, University of Vienna > Failed Transition and the Multiple > Legitimacy Crisis of Post-1992 > Yugoslavia > Corneliu Bjola, Central European > University > The Role of ?Symbolic Politics? during the > Democratization Process > Omer Fisher, University of Strathclyde > Transition and Disruption: > The Yugoslav Case in Comparative > Perspective > Catalin Augustin Stoica, Stanford > University > Grass roots Capitalism and the Formation > of Petty-Bourgeoisie in > Eastern Europe: > Evidence from the Romanian Case > > 4:30 p.m. Break > > 5:00 p.m. Politics > Chair: Elizabeth Prodromou, Cambridge > Peace Foundation > Altin Ilirjani, Central European > University > Policy Motivated Actors and Multiparty > Coalition Governments in > Turkey, 1995-98 > Maria Kapsi, Harvard University > Recent Administrative Reforms in Greece: > Towards Democratic > Consolidation and Efficiency > Nadege Ragaru, Institut d'Etudes > Politiques > Uslugi: The Role of Political Favors and > Connections in Post-Communist > Bulgaria > Philippos Savvides, University of Utah > Cyprus: The Dynamics of Partition > > 7:00 p.m. Concluding Remarks > > > > > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/octet-stream name=pic00697.pcx __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Mon Feb 7 12:29:02 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 09:29:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Prononcim i KMDLNJ-se per ngjarjet ne Mitrovice Message-ID: <20000207172902.10883.qmail@web801.mail.yahoo.com> > K?SHILLI P?R MBROJTJEN E T? DREJTAVE E T? LIRIVE T? > NJERIUT > COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND > FREEDOMS > Rr. Zdrini, 38000 Prishtin?-Kosov?; tel. 381 (0) > 549006 fax: 381 (0) 38 > 549007 > E-mail:kmdlnj at albanian.com cdhrf at albanian.com > http://www.albanian.com/kmdlnj > > Prononcim i KMDLNJ-s? p?r ngjarjet n? Mitrovic? > > N? MITROVIC? SI N? SREBRENIC? > > Vrasja e s? paku 9 qytetar?ve shqiptar? dhe plagosja > e dhjet?ra t? tjer?ve > n? pjes?n veriore t? Mitrovic?s, t? kontrolluar nga > serb?t dhe bandat e tyre > kriminale, paraqet vazhdim?sin? e dhun?s sistematike > serbe n? k?t? pjes? t? > Kosov?s. Sipas informacioneve q? i kan? arritur > KMDLNJ-s?, t? enjten, duke > filluar nga ora 19, grupe t? m?dha serb?sh, t? > pajisur me arm? zjarri e me > shufra hekuri kan? filluar t? hyjn? dhunsh?m n?p?r > banesa e sht?pi > shqiptar?sh n? pjes?n veriore t? Mitrovic?s dhe t? > sulmojn? e terrorizojn? > banor?t shqiptar?, pa dallim moshe a gjinie. Gjendja > e till? ka zgjatur p?r > disa or? rresht dhe p?r ?udi pjes?tar?t e forcave t? > KFOR-it, vet?m pas disa > or?sh, kan? reaguar dhe kan? nd?rprer? k?to akte > terroriste. > KMDLNJ n? Prishtin? me koh? ka t?rhequr v?rejtjen se > krijimi dhe legjitimimi > i enklavave serbe n? Kosov? do t? jen? burim i > p?rhersh?m i konflikteve dhe > qerdhe t? bandave kriminale serbe, t? cil?t n? vend > se t? arrestohen e t?i > dor?zohen Gjykat?s s? Hag?s ata lirsh?m dhe n?n > mbrojtje t? forcave t? > KFOR-it sh?tisin dhe sulmojn? shqiptar?t. Incidentet > dhe dhuna mbi qytetar?t > shqiptar? t? k?tyre bandave si n? Kamenic?, Gjilan, > Viti, Gra?anic? t? > Prishtin?s e n? enklava t? tjera serbe, kan? p?r > q?llim mbajtjen e gjendjes > n?n presion t? p?rhersh?m dhe pengimin e > stabilizimit t? gjendjes n? Kosov?. > Pika kulminante e k?saj dhune ndodhi n? Mitrovic?, > ku edhe m? par? kishte > aksione t? dhunshme t? bandave kriminale serbe t? > prira nga Sigurimi > Shtet?ror serb. K?saj radhe, pretekst ishte vrasja, > ende e pasqaruar e 2 dhe > plagosja e 3 qytetar?ve t? nacionalitetit serb para > disa dit?sh n? Qubrel. > Q? nga ardhja e forcave t? KFOR-it n? Kosov? nuk ka > mbetur asnj? dit? pa u > rrahur e keqtrajtuar banor?t e pakt? shqiptar? q? > kan? pasur guxim t? > q?ndrojn? n? k?t? pjes? t? qytetit. Pjes?tar?t e > forcave paq?ruajt?se jo > vet?m se nuk e kan? penguar nj? dhun? t? till? por > n? shum? raste edhe ata > kan? marr? pjes? n? rrahje e keqtrajtime t? > popullat?s shqiptare, pra jan? > v?n? n? krah t? paramilitar?ve, t? cil?t arm?t i > bartin haptazi n?p?r rrug?. > Nj? gj? e till? ka ndodhur edhe nat?n e p?rmendur me > ??rast bandat > terroriste serbe jan? lejuar t? terrorizojn? banor?t > shqiptar? p?r or? t? > t?ra dhe, si pasoj? jan? vrar? s? paku 9 shqiptar? e > dhjet?ra t? tjer? kan? > p?suar plag? t? r?nda. KMDLNJ ka informacione t? > sakta se n? k?t? pjes? t? > Kosov?s veprojn? lirsh?m grupet terroriste serbe, t? > cilat edhe n? t? > kaluar?n kan? marr? pjes? n? terrorizimin e > popullat?s shqiptare t? Kosov?s. > P?r KMLDNJ-n? jan? t? papranueshme edhe sjelljet e > forcave t? KFOR-it ndaj > protestues?ve shqiptar?, t? cil?t ishin tubuar af?r > ur?s s? Ibrit, q? ndan? > qytetin. K?to forca ndaj shqiptar?ve paq?sor? kan? > p?rdorur dhun?n, nd?rkaq > q? n? an?n tjet?r bandat kriminale serbe n? prani t? > tyre kan? terrorizuar > shqiptar?t e pafajsh?m e t? pambrojtur. KMDLNJ > konsideron se nj? pjes? e > fajit dhe e p?rgjegj?sis? bie pik?risht mbi > pjes?tar?t e KFOR-it, sidomos t? > kontingjentit francez, ngase nuk ?sht? tentuar q? t? > pengohet dhuna dhe > terrori, ?sht? vepruar si n? Srebrenic?.P?r m? tep?r > forcat e kontingjentit > n? fjal?, jo vet?m k?saj radhe por edhe m? par?, e > kan? stimuluar dhun?n mbi > popullat?n shqiptare dhe jan? v?n? n? krah t? > kriminel?ve.P?r m? tep?r, > dyshimi sforcohet kur kihen parasysh sjelljet e tyre > ndaj qytetar?ve > shqiptar? n? t? dy pjes?t e Mitrovic?s. KMDLNJ disa > her? ka b?r? v?rejtje n? > sjelljet e forcave franceze t? KFOR-it, t? cil?t nuk > kalon asnj? dit? e t? > mos keqtrajtojn?, sidomos t? rinjt shqiptar?. > > Bashk?fajtore n? k?t? masak?r ?sht? edhe UNMIKU, > ngase me lejimin e krijimit > t? enklavave serbe kan? p?rligjur ndarjen e Kosov?s, > madje k?to enklave jan? > b?r? mburoj? p?r kriminel?t e t? gjitha ngjyrave t? > cil?t shetisin m? lire > se n? Kragujevc. > Pa dyshim se rasti i fundit n? Mitrovic? p?rb?n > pik?n m? t? lart? t? krimit > gjat? k?tyre muajve dhe ky akt ka shpaluar fytyr?n e > v?rtet? dhe q?llimet e > serb?ve jo vet?m n? k?t? pjes? t? Kosov?s. > KMDLNJ k?rkon q? krahas arrestimit dhe d?nimit t? > kryesve t? k?tij krimi dhe > krimeve t? tjera n? p?rgjegj?si t? thirren edhe > p?rgjegj?sit e forcave > franceze t? KFOR-it, t? cilat kan? lejuar q? p?r or? > t? t?ra t? terrorizohen > banor?t shqiptar? t? k?saj pjese t? Mitrovic?s. > Nga bashk?sia nd?rkomb?tare k?rkojm? demonstrim > konkret t? vendosm?ris? p?r > zgjidhjen e problemeve dhe vendosjen e rendit , > qet?sis? si edhe krijimin e > kushteve p?r kthim t? gjith? atyreve q? me dhun? > jan? d?buar nga banesat dhe > sht?pit? e tyre pavar?sisht nga p?rkat?sia nacionale > e tyre. KMDLNJ > distancohet dhe d?non ?do akt dhune q? ushtrohet > ndaj qytetar?ve t? Kosov?s > dhe b?n? thirrje publike t? nd?rpritet spiralja e > dhun?s. > > > 6.2.2000 Behxhet SHALA, sekretar > Prishtin? > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at > http://www.hotmail.com > > ____________________________________________________________________ > ALBANEWS Site of the Day: "Kosova-Info-Line > (Germany)" > http://www.kosova-info-line.de/ > ____________________________________________________________________ > ALBANEWS is not affiliated with the Albanian > Government, the Kosova > Government, any association or organization, nor > any information or > news agency. Reports, articles and news items from > various sources > are distributed via ALBANEWS for INFORMATIVE > purposes only. > Opinions expressed/published on ALBANEWS do NOT > necessarily reflect > the views of the owner and the co-owners and/or > moderators, nor any > of their host institutions. ALBANEWS does NOT > guarantee the accuracy > of the reports, articles and news items distributed > via the list. > ____________________________________________________________________ > ALBANEWS listowner, co-owners and/or moderators can > be contacted at: > ALBANEWS-request at listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Mon Feb 7 16:10:39 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 13:10:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Serb Terror in Mitrovice Message-ID: <20000207211039.9727.qmail@web802.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/020700kosovo-violence.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Mon Feb 7 21:01:27 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 18:01:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Workshop in Budapest Message-ID: <20000208020127.27640.qmail@web113.yahoomail.com> The Central European University (Budapest) announces an international workshop on Perceptions of "Modernities:" Emergence of Political Modernity, Social Transformation and Ideologies of Modernism in Central and Southeast Europe in mid-19th-20th c. (Budapest, May 2000) Call for Papers Application deadline, March 1, 2000 Much has been written about the multiplicity of the processes and forms of modernisation in Central and Southeast Europe. It has become obvious that projects of modernity that have been construed in Western Europe, have been differently understood and implemented in these regions. In that sense, some of the features of these cultures, that are usually labelled as signs of "backwardness", are not to be simply disregarded, just because they are mirroring other cultural configuration than the "western" one. Along these lines, it is important to use more elaborate historical and geographical perspectives than those infusing present scholarship, artificially separating countries into "Western" and "ex-Communist" ones. Western scholars have paid some attention to this disparity or difference, yet indigenous perspectives are still to be proposed. The idea of organising a workshop that would coagulate new perspectives of young scholars from these regions was formulated with respect to this need. The invitation to attend the workshop is open to graduate students and PhD candidates, in social sciences and humanities. In addition to the title of the paper, applicants are suggested to submit a 250-words abstract, delineating the principal ideas of their presentation. Limited subsidies to cover travel expenses will be available. Accommodation and food will be entirely provided. The problems of divergent visions of modernism in our region will be approached from three main perspectives based on three branches of disciplines: historical, political/sociological and cultural studies. Respectively, papers may correspond to the following topics and areas of studies: I. Historical approaches: a. The protracted emergence of nation-states in the region b. Rejection, assimilation, emulation of modernity-projects in the XIX-XXth centuries II. Sociological/Political science approaches: a. Analysis of intercultural and interethnic conflicts and coexistence in the region; issues of minority protection. b. Typologies of social and political transformation in post-1989 Central and Southeast Europe III. Cultural approaches: a. Cultural representations and theories of modernism b. Transformation of identities: multiplicity of self-definition, social practices, everyday life Applications should be submitted to the conveyors of the workshop: Vangelis Kechriotis (University of Athens, History Department, Ph.D. student) Boyan Manchev (State University of Sofia "Kliment Ohridski", assistant lecturer) Tanja Petrovic (Yugoslavian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistics, researcher) ?gota Szentannai (ELTE Institute of Sociology, Ph.D. student) Bal?zs Trencs?nyi (CEU History Department, Ph.D. student) Marius Turda (CEU History Department, Ph.D. student, hphtum01 at phd.ceu.hu) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From register at washingtonpost.com Wed Feb 9 10:48:16 2000 From: register at washingtonpost.com (register at washingtonpost.com) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 10:48:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] A washingtonpost.com article from pilika@yahoo.com Message-ID: <200002091548.KAA25200@nas1.washingtonpost.com> You have been sent this message from pilika at yahoo.com as a courtesy of the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com). To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29056-2000Feb9.html French Troops in Kosovo Accused of Retreat KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb. 8 –– United Nations policemen led by a veteran officer from Midland, Tex., charged into a jeering, chanting Serbian mob in this city in northern Kosovo last Thursday night, trying to reach several colleagues and ethnic Albanians who were under siege in an apartment building.

When one of the Serbs struck the lead officer in the back with a wooden stick, knocking him to the ground, the officer turned around, expecting to see French peacekeeping soldiers charging to his rescue. Instead, he saw their backs as they retreated toward two armored personnel carriers and a nearby apartment building, several officers said.

After cursing angrily on the police radio that the French troops had left, the officer decided he had little choice but to retreat and regroup. Hours later, a Danish military company lent needed assistance and the rescue was performed. But the bitterness lingers throughout the 65-man police force patrolling the northern quarter of this divided city, which is about 30 miles northwest of Pristina, the Kosovo capital.

"Every nationality here wants to know why they walked off and left us," an officer said, on condition he not be identified. "Everyone was calling them, but the French did not respond."

The commander of the NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, German army Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, said on Sunday that he could not fault the performance of the French troops during the worst night of violence in Kosovo since the end of the war last June.

The criticism, which echoes comments by local ethnic Albanian residents, has touched a raw nerve in the French military command, which has been responsible for NATO peacekeeping operations in northern Kosovo--including this bitterly divided city--for the past eight months. The commander of the 250-man French infantry battalion responsible for peacekeeping in northern Mitrovica, Col. Jean Philippe Bernard, and several other French officers denied the allegations. Bernard said that "most Albanians who asked for help received it."

But 11 U.N. police officers from three countries said in interviews that the soldiers fell short of fulfilling their responsibility for keeping peace and maintaining order. The officers charged in interviews here that the French soldiers had failed to provide essential support during the riot, and that the French had not adequately protected ethnic Albanians from the Serbian mob.

During the mayhem, which evidently was provoked by a grenade attack on a bar packed with Serbian patrons, at least eight ethnic Albanians were killed. Since then, more than 500 ethnic Albanians have been forced to flee to the southern side of the Ibar River, which bisects the town and forms a natural barrier between its rival Serb and Albanian enclaves.

French soldiers "could have caught these people as they came out of buildings," said one officer of the Serb assailants. "Instead, it was free sledding for the criminals."

One of the police officers reported that when he asked the commander of a group of French tanks and armored personnel carriers to follow him into the center of the city for a second attempt to rescue trapped policemen, the drivers of the vehicles instead threw them into reverse and withdrew 50 yards.

Two other officers and a local resident said French soldiers remained hunkered down in two armored personnel carriers despite "blood-curdling" screams from an ethnic Albanian woman who was being beaten nearby. Bernard and several of his men say they were indeed stationed in the area but saw no one beaten.

Several other U.N. policemen complained that the local French military hospital refused to treat any of the dozen or so ethnic Albanians wounded by gunshots or grenades, following a policy decision to reserve its beds for potential casualties among French soldiers that night. Two of the victims later died at a Moroccan military field hospital that French officers conceded lacks comparable expertise in treating war wounds.

Danish soldiers who arrived in northern Mitrovica later in the evening provided prompt and reliable assistance, in contrast to the French response, the U.N. officers said.

A local Serbian community leader, Oliver Ivanovic, defended the performance of the French troops, saying "there were too many angry people in the same place at the same time" for any NATO peacekeeping intervention to be effective. But Ivanovic added in an interview that the French troops should have been better prepared. "You have to have instincts about what's happening," he said. "They didn't have enough soldiers for what happened."

About 4,600 French troops patrol northern Kosovo, one of the five sectors in the province created by NATO when its forces entered the province last June following the withdrawal of Serb-led Yugoslav army and police units. The four other sectors are under American, British, German and Italian command. Last Thursday's riot followed a series of tit-for-tat attacks that caused U.N. officials and Serbian community leaders to warn French troops of increased dangers. On Jan. 31, three days before the riot, two ethnic Albanians in the nearby city of Srbica were killed. Two days later, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a bus carrying Serbian civilians close to Mitrovica. Two of the passengers were killed.

But Bernard said no additional French troops were deployed on the north side of the city on Thursday, before the riot began, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. The riot started shortly after several grenades were tossed into a cafe packed with Serb patrons and a Serb mother claimed--falsely, as it turned out--that ethnic Albanians had taken her 12-year-old son hostage, according to Ivanovic.

Shortly after learning that a mob of as many as 700 people had gathered at the intersection of King Peter and Lola Rebara streets, Bernard ordered 300 extra soldiers dispatched to northern Mitrovica, where they helped keep peace and rescue trapped ethnic Albanians, he said.

Bernard said they got no request for assistance from U.N. police officers, a claim disputed by all of the officers interviewed, by the French liaison officer to the U.N. police, and, according to sources, by the log books at the police station. Bernard also said the only time any of them were pulled back from their posts was shortly before the arrival of the supplementary Danish battalion about 45 minutes later. Several of the policemen said that relations between the 250-member French battalion in northern Mitrovica and the relatively small U.N. force of 65 police officers here were poor before this event.

Several police officers said, for example, that French troops on Sunday afternoon declined their request for military backup to conduct a search at the Dolce Vita cafe in northern Mitrovica--a hangout for officials from Belgrade--after two witnesses had reported seeing patrons carrying grenades. A French liaison officer responded that his troops did not want to participate in such a provocative act because ethnic tensions were beginning to wane. As a result, the search was subsequently called off.

Two of the U.N. police officers who described what had happened initially were willing to allow their names to be used in this article. But they said they changed their minds after being threatened with suspension in response to pressure from the French military staff to keep quiet. One said a senior French officer threatened today to suspend all future cooperation with the police unless the officers halted the disclosures.

From pilika at yahoo.com Wed Feb 9 11:07:06 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 08:07:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] From the Washington Post Message-ID: <20000209160706.25793.qmail@web805.mail.yahoo.com> French Troops in Kosovo Accused of Retreat E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, February 9, 2000; Page A14 KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb. 8 ?? United Nations policemen led by a veteran officer from Midland, Tex., charged into a jeering, chanting Serbian mob in this city in northern Kosovo last Thursday night, trying to reach several colleagues and ethnic Albanians who were under siege in an apartment building. When one of the Serbs struck the lead officer in the back with a wooden stick, knocking him to the ground, the officer turned around, expecting to see French peacekeeping soldiers charging to his rescue. Instead, he saw their backs as they retreated toward two armored personnel carriers and a nearby apartment building, several officers said. After cursing angrily on the police radio that the French troops had left, the officer decided he had little choice but to retreat and regroup. Hours later, a Danish military company lent needed assistance and the rescue was performed. But the bitterness lingers throughout the 65-man police force patrolling the northern quarter of this divided city, which is about 30 miles northwest of Pristina, the Kosovo capital. "Every nationality here wants to know why they walked off and left us," an officer said, on condition he not be identified. "Everyone was calling them, but the French did not respond." The commander of the NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, German army Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, said on Sunday that he could not fault the performance of the French troops during the worst night of violence in Kosovo since the end of the war last June. The criticism, which echoes comments by local ethnic Albanian residents, has touched a raw nerve in the French military command, which has been responsible for NATO peacekeeping operations in northern Kosovo--including this bitterly divided city--for the past eight months. The commander of the 250-man French infantry battalion responsible for peacekeeping in northern Mitrovica, Col. Jean Philippe Bernard, and several other French officers denied the allegations. Bernard said that "most Albanians who asked for help received it." But 11 U.N. police officers from three countries said in interviews that the soldiers fell short of fulfilling their responsibility for keeping peace and maintaining order. The officers charged in interviews here that the French soldiers had failed to provide essential support during the riot, and that the French had not adequately protected ethnic Albanians from the Serbian mob. During the mayhem, which evidently was provoked by a grenade attack on a bar packed with Serbian patrons, at least eight ethnic Albanians were killed. Since then, more than 500 ethnic Albanians have been forced to flee to the southern side of the Ibar River, which bisects the town and forms a natural barrier between its rival Serb and Albanian enclaves. French soldiers "could have caught these people as they came out of buildings," said one officer of the Serb assailants. "Instead, it was free sledding for the criminals." One of the police officers reported that when he asked the commander of a group of French tanks and armored personnel carriers to follow him into the center of the city for a second attempt to rescue trapped policemen, the drivers of the vehicles instead threw them into reverse and withdrew 50 yards. Two other officers and a local resident said French soldiers remained hunkered down in two armored personnel carriers despite "blood-curdling" screams from an ethnic Albanian woman who was being beaten nearby. Bernard and several of his men say they were indeed stationed in the area but saw no one beaten. Several other U.N. policemen complained that the local French military hospital refused to treat any of the dozen or so ethnic Albanians wounded by gunshots or grenades, following a policy decision to reserve its beds for potential casualties among French soldiers that night. Two of the victims later died at a Moroccan military field hospital that French officers conceded lacks comparable expertise in treating war wounds. Danish soldiers who arrived in northern Mitrovica later in the evening provided prompt and reliable assistance, in contrast to the French response, the U.N. officers said. A local Serbian community leader, Oliver Ivanovic, defended the performance of the French troops, saying "there were too many angry people in the same place at the same time" for any NATO peacekeeping intervention to be effective. But Ivanovic added in an interview that the French troops should have been better prepared. "You have to have instincts about what's happening," he said. "They didn't have enough soldiers for what happened." About 4,600 French troops patrol northern Kosovo, one of the five sectors in the province created by NATO when its forces entered the province last June following the withdrawal of Serb-led Yugoslav army and police units. The four other sectors are under American, British, German and Italian command. Last Thursday's riot followed a series of tit-for-tat attacks that caused U.N. officials and Serbian community leaders to warn French troops of increased dangers. On Jan. 31, three days before the riot, two ethnic Albanians in the nearby city of Srbica were killed. Two days later, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a bus carrying Serbian civilians close to Mitrovica. Two of the passengers were killed. But Bernard said no additional French troops were deployed on the north side of the city on Thursday, before the riot began, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. The riot started shortly after several grenades were tossed into a cafe packed with Serb patrons and a Serb mother claimed--falsely, as it turned out--that ethnic Albanians had taken her 12-year-old son hostage, according to Ivanovic. Shortly after learning that a mob of as many as 700 people had gathered at the intersection of King Peter and Lola Rebara streets, Bernard ordered 300 extra soldiers dispatched to northern Mitrovica, where they helped keep peace and rescue trapped ethnic Albanians, he said. Bernard said they got no request for assistance from U.N. police officers, a claim disputed by all of the officers interviewed, by the French liaison officer to the U.N. police, and, according to sources, by the log books at the police station. Bernard also said the only time any of them were pulled back from their posts was shortly before the arrival of the supplementary Danish battalion about 45 minutes later. Several of the policemen said that relations between the 250-member French battalion in northern Mitrovica and the relatively small U.N. force of 65 police officers here were poor before this event. Several police officers said, for example, that French troops on Sunday afternoon declined their request for military backup to conduct a search at the Dolce Vita cafe in northern Mitrovica--a hangout for officials from Belgrade--after two witnesses had reported seeing patrons carrying grenades. A French liaison officer responded that his troops did not want to participate in such a provocative act because ethnic tensions were beginning to wane. As a result, the search was subsequently called off. Two of the U.N. police officers who described what had happened initially were willing to allow their names to be used in this article. But they said they changed their minds after being threatened with suspension in response to pressure from the French military staff to keep quiet. One said a senior French officer threatened today to suspend all future cooperation with the police unless the officers halted the disclosures. ? 2000 The Washington Post Company __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Wed Feb 9 19:00:37 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 19:00:37 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 4 Message-ID: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 09, 2000, Wednesday SECTION: Pg. 15 LENGTH: 928 words HEADLINE: The Balkans - legacy of war: Little sister squares up to big bully Milosevic The assassination in Belgrade has increased tension between Serbia and Montenegro BYLINE: By Caroline Davies BODY: ON barked command the officers draw their pistols. "These are the elite," boasts Milan Perovic their commander, as his men swarm round a wall to confront a personnel carrier throwing flares to disorientate those inside. "They are the best in Montenegro, the best in the Balkans." We are in the grounds of the Motel Zlatica, a former hotel now converted into barracks on the outskirts of Montenegro's capital, Podgorica. Protected by black bullet-proof vests and state-of-the-art weaponry, these men make up the hard core of the Spezijalni, Montenegro's special police force. This is just a training exercise, but elsewhere in Montenegro, Serbia's small sister in the Yugoslav Federation, members of the special police are positioned and ready for war. Travelling along the snow-covered, mountainous roads that criss-cross this tiny republic of 650,000 people, first impressions are not of war but of calm. Serbian army roadblocks and border control posts, imposed during the Kosovo conflict in defiance of Montenegro's wishes, have been dismantled. "They will never, I repeat, never appear on our roads again," growls Vuk Boskovic, Montenegro's deputy minister for police. The Yugoslav 2nd Army, under Belgrade's command and said still to number around 7,000 in Montenegro, has retreated to barracks. The country's anti-Milosevic coalition government daily inches away from Belgrade. The German mark is now as legal as the dinar. The police have regained control of the customs posts. Yugoslav visa restrictions are totally ignored and visitors are free to travel. Montenegrin Airlines, grounded when the Yugoslav army took over the airport during Nato's bombardment, has resumed daily flights. The runway, pounded mercilessly by Nato, is resurfaced and airlines hope to transport tourists to the beaches and ski resorts of this breathtakingly scenic country. But the initial sense of calm belies the unease that continues to exist in a state that serves as Serbia's only outlet to the sea. Having steered a neutral path through the war, and buoyed by recognition and aid from the West, President Milo Djukanovic has issued an ultimatum to Belgrade: greater automony for his country, an equal partnership, or he will call a referendum on independence. Independence from Serbia is something Milosevic cannot be seen to tolerate. The port of Bar provides Serbia's sole route to the sea. It also allows Milosevic to maintain the idea of a Yugoslavia. Without Montenegro there would be only Serbia. There is also a strong and emotive blood tie. Since the bloody break-up of the Balkans began in the early Nineties, Montenegro has been Serbia's staunch ally. It was the Montenegrins who assaulted the medieval walled city of Dubrovnik in 1991. Indeed Yugoslavia's Federal Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic, one of Milosevic's loyal followers, was President of Montenegro before being succeeded by Mr Djukanovic. Today Mr Bulatovic is under investigation in his home country, accused of attempting a coup against his homeland after attending a rally in Niksic in December when he insulted the Montenegrin police and attacked the authorities in Podgorica. Now, with the murder in Belgrade of Pavle Bulatovic, the Yugoslav Defence Minister, tension seems ready to rise. Pavle Bulatovic, who is not related to the federal Prime Minister, was a senior member of Montenegro's Socialist People's Party, which is in direct opposition to the reformist government. Many Montenegrins abhor his party. It has been five months since Mr Djukanovic issued his ultimatum and Belgrade's only response has been to rule Montenegro's use of the German mark illegal. It has also banned transactions to Serbian accounts in an attempt to exert pressure. Despite this, Mr Djukanovic has not carried out his threat. The West is unenthusiastic and has not promised support. A referendum could mean war, in effect a civil war, as half of Montenegro is still loyal to Serbia, while the other half strains towards the freedom. Hence the Spezijalni. They are everywhere, particularly near the border with Serbia. This special police force, now believed to number at least 15,000, will if necessary form the basis of a Montenegrin army. They keep a wary eye on the Yugoslav 2nd Army. Loyal to Mr Djukanovic and paid handsomely in marks (not dinars, the official rate having slid in six months from six to the mark to 20) the police ranks are said to be swollen daily by defecting army officers. However, if relations with Serbia deteriorate further, the Federation's army numbers would probably increase to 25,000, including a large number of rough and ready reservists. Already there are said to be about 700 special pro-Serbian military police installed in the north of Montenegro. Local intelligence suggests the government is willing to tolerate their presence as long as their number does not exceed 2,000. In Podgorica the cafes and bars are overflowing with young men, who sit smoking over coffees and beers. There is little else to occupy them and the talk is mostly of politics. Dark rumours circulate, impossible to test, of 2,000 disengaged paramilitary fighters who have supposedly converged on Montenegro, rumours hotly denied by the government. Others speak of plans to erect refugee camps in Bosnia-Hercegovina to house Montenegrins when the Albanians take over their country. There is no evidence at any of this, except in the imaginations of those who are now no longer surprised at what Milosevic might do. Indeed, they seem to spend their days waiting for it. From laberia at hotmail.com Wed Feb 9 18:16:50 2000 From: laberia at hotmail.com (Sorkadh Mustafa) Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 15:16:50 PST Subject: [ALBSA-Info] RALLY TO FREE KOSOVAS POWS Message-ID: <20000209231650.52379.qmail@hotmail.com> >ALBANIAN AMERICAN CIVIC LEAGUE > >P.O. Box 70, Ossining, NY 10562 > > >For immediate release > >Contact: Joe DioGuardi and Shirley Cloyes > >(914) 762-5530 or (914) 671-8583 > > > >RALLY TO FREE KOSOVA?S POWS > >FUNDRAISING RECEPTION FOR JOHN MCCAIN > >NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 10 --On Friday, February 11, at 10:00 a.m., Senator John >McCain will come to Manhattan, in the wake of his victories in the New >Hampshire primary and in the New York courts (he will be on our state?s >primary ballot in March), for his campaign?s fundraising reception and >lunch at the Grand Hyatt Regency Hotel. > >McCain?s visit to New York?which will be covered extensively in the >press--provides us with a unique opportunity to do two things. First, we >want to show our support for McCain, because he was one of the few >Republican senators who supported the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, >and he is the only Republican presidential candidate who supports our >issues. > >Second, because Senator McCain, a POW during the Vietnam War, understands >what it means to be a prisoner of war, we want to bring to his attention >the plight of the more than 5,000 Kosovar Albanian prisoners in Serbian >jails, who were abandoned by the Clinton administration at the close of the >war. (A report released at the end of January by the International Crisis >Group revealed that the U.S. Department of Defense, National Security >Council, CIA, and Joint Chiefs of Staff dropped the provision from the >war-ending agreement demanding the prisoners? release in an effort to bring >an immediate end to the war.) > >We have reserved tables at the luncheon reception at the Hyatt at 12 noon. >If you would like to attend the $250-a-head reception, please phone us. >Outside the Hyatt, which is located next to Grand Central Station, at 42nd >Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, we will hold a rally showing our >support for McCain and calling for the release of Albanian prisoners in >Serbian jails. We will also demand the end of the de facto partitioning of >Mitrovica. > >Please bring to the rally American flags, Albanian flags, and signs for >McCain and for the release of Kosova?s POWs. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Wed Feb 9 18:57:28 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 18:57:28 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph Message-ID: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 09, 2000, Wednesday Pg. 14 The Balkans - legacy of war: The end of strife in this region is still just a dream The flight of Kosovo refugees into Macedonia became a humanitarian disaster. W. F. Deedes returned to Blace, the scene of their suffering By W. F. Deedes : THERE were traces of white on hills around Blace where snow had fallen when I passed through that frontier post between Kosovo and Macedonia yesterday. There were, I remembered, traces of white there last Easter when the trees were in blossom and in the valley below 65,000 desperate refugees from Kosovo were locked in a muddy water meadow guarded at gunpoint by Macedonian police. In neither peace nor war had I ever witnessed such a sea of human degradation. The field, a few yards short of the frontier post, is empty now. But everything else on a grey winter morning looked very much the same. The Macedonian frontier police examined our passports for a while. Then they asked the driver of our United Nations Children's Fund vehicle for its engine number. As if he knew. This leopard hasn't changed its spots, I thought, as eventually we moved on. It clicked a shutter in my mind on the scene there at Easter 1999. The Nato bombing had begun on March 24, refugees streamed out of Kosovo towards Macedonia through Holy Week. By Easter Sunday the field at Blace was crammed. I had arrived just in time to join an ominous meeting that night of top brass in the Hotel Continental, where I am staying now. They met to discuss the crisis at Blace. Clare Short had flown in from Britain. Lt Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the Nato ground force commander, was there. One or two deeply unhappy Macedonian ministers were also present. "I want 10,000 out of that place tonight," Clare Short demanded. The ministers looked even more deeply unhappy and went to work on their mobile telephones. It became apparent to all present that tens of thousands of starving refugees in a muddy hell hole were grievously compromising our Government's declared humanitarian intentions. Hence, the presence of Clare Short. A European official sitting next to me scribbled a note which informed me that 17 of the refugees had died on Saturday, including seven children. The figure for Sunday was 20, including six children. Next morning, Easter Monday, we went to Blace, 20 minutes' drive out of Skopje. A local Red Cross aid post had been set up to deal with the worst cases of exhaustion and panic. That was all. The grim scene was made grimmer by the Macedonian authorities' refusal to allow aid agencies near the place. The only relief afforded to this despairing mass of human beings were loaves, bottles of water and thin plastic sheets. It presented a vast picture of human misery that television cameras, dodging the police, sent out to the world. Astonished and ashamed that their police had been made to look like brutes, the Macedonian government pressed every available bus into service and began rapidly to clear the field. There is still bitterness felt in government circles at the way in which Nato, whose bombing of Serbia had precipitated the exodus, appeared in knight's armour while the Macedonian police were made to look brutal. Some of the 5,000 refugees in Blace were moved to Struga on the Albanian frontier to which I returned this week for a heart-warming reunion with Mother Teresa Association workers. We went there in April searching for MTA, which had provided an invaluable medical alternative for those who mistrusted Serbs. In response to our Christmas Appeal of 1998 Daily Telegraph readers had given around pounds 130,000 for this organisation which was then torn apart and scattered by the Kosovo crisis. By some happy chance I reached Struga a day or two after the refugees had arrived. The town had greeted them and had individually volunteered to offer homes for every one. But where was the food for poor hosts to give their guests? I handed over enough of our readers' money to take care of that. This week, the same faces from the MTA greeted me - and produced a copy of their accounts explaining how the readers' money had been spent in the crisis of last spring. The refugees have gone home, but the medical problems locally are huge. So the work goes on. That was the up side of my visit to the Struga. The down side was the collective centre where Roma refugees from Kosovo reminded us that for a lot of people the war is not over yet. The Roma refugees occupy what was once a children's holiday home. Ohrid was a popular tourist centre for Europeans. It offers a gorgeous outlook across a lake and towards the snow-capped mountains, but a most doubtful future for the Romas who now have nowhere to go. They exist in the state of semi-detention in Struga. Only 25 are allowed out at a time. The World Food Programme gives them food, but they have no money to speak of and some are living seven to a room. This is part of the detritus of our humanitarian war - and, alas, only a small part of it. A school for Roma children, fostered by Unicef, opened two days ago. Demili Ramadan, a Roma schoolteacher, had 45 children between the ages of seven and 14 in his care. He had attended a secondary school in Gnjilade in Kosovo which he will never see again. No Roma has a future there. The seed of hope for the many left with "no hope" by the Kosovo war may lie somewhere here. Watching a class of these children, I saw the force of Unicef's approach to the Millennium. To invest in education is a way to end strife. That is their dream, to put a sort of firebreak down against man's inhumanity to man, and help the young to find a better way. The Unicef programme in Macedonia is impressive. By the end of 2001, with luck, 50 per cent of the children will be attending pre-school. Well, one finds at the end of this return journey there is a desperate need for some such contribution. For the end of strife in this region is nowhere in sight. Refugees are unpopular in every country. If they are Serbs or Roma and return to Kosovo, their lives are instantly at risk. All my experience of civil wars in places such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Liberia supports that warning. Ethnic cleansing poisons its practitioners and they turn against each other. Besides the Romas and the Serbs there are hosts of refugees from Kosovo still in no man's land. Tens of thousands, purged by the Serbs a decade ago, are still sheltering in Switzerland and Germany. There are reckoned to be around 100,000 in those parts. Now that Kosovo has been liberated, the Germans and the Swiss would like these "refugees" to move on. But has Kosovo been liberated? The country is in no man's land and will remain so until the international community can make up its mind what is best done with the place. And then there are some 250,000 Serbs taking refuge from Kosovo in Serbia. Where does their future lie? The component parts of what was once communist Yugoslavia are suffering from a thrombosis. There is a blockage of the arteries. In Macedonia the unemployment rate is nudging 40 per cent. Social services have been cut. None of this region is going to revive let alone flourish, as things are. Some tell me the region is crying out for another Marshall plan. I differ. What is lacking is the will of those in the West who, coming up to a year ago, decided to fight a humanitarian war and who indirectly piled up all those refugees at Blace, to see the business through. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Wed Feb 9 18:59:28 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 18:59:28 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 2 Message-ID: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 09, 2000, Wednesday Pg. 14 The Balkans - legacy of war: How the gamble on peace was lost A year ago this week, talks on Kosovo were deadlocked. Tim Judah analyses the miscalculations that plunged Europe into conflict By Tim Judah THE American diplomat bundled me into a dingy Rambouillet cafe, slipped 10 francs to my 10-year-old son to play pinball and said: "If it comes to bombing, it's going to be heavy, not pinprick stuff, and I seriously doubt whether Milosevic is still going to be there at the end of it!" At the time I did not recognise the symptoms. It was panic. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, was flying in the next morning, the Kosovo Albanians were refusing to sign a peace deal that did not promise an independence referendum in three years, and the Serbs were refusing to discuss a Nato-led peace force for their southern province. Mrs Albright was facing major humiliation. The negotiations at the chateau outside Paris had been called in the wake of the massacre of 45 Albanian civilians by Serb forces in Racak on 15 Jan 1999. Mrs Albright first heard about it on the news at 4.30am the next day when her clock radio woke her up. Outraged, she called Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser and said: "Spring has come early to Kosovo." For weeks she had been arguing that the conflict was spinning out of control and that what was needed was diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force. The allies agreed. The talks, which began on Feb 6, were co-chaired by Britain and France, but the blueprint for peace presented to the Serbs and Albanians was the result of months of shuttle diplomacy led by Chris Hill, the US special envoy, and Wolfgang Petritsch for the EU. In effect, the document asked both sides to come to an historic compromise, at the very least for an interim period of three years. The proposal was that Kosovo should become self-governing, virtually independent even, but that in exchange it should remain within the borders of Yugoslavia. Security for the Serbian minority within Kosovo would be guaranteed and the Nato-led force would make sure that Serbian forces withdrew and that ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) would be disarmed. The choice was stark. The Serbs were being told that if they failed to sign they would be bombed and if the Albanians failed to sign, they would be left to the tender mercies of Serbian troops and paramilitaries. On this basis, it seemed fair to assume that, at the last minute, the negotiators would close the deal. On the eve of the conference, however, doubts began to emerge. A British diplomat who had taken part in the talks in Dayton, Ohio which had ended the Bosnian war in November 1995, made a chilling observation. "In Bosnia, everyone was ready, they were all exhausted . . . the problem here is that we are trying to get them to agree to a deal before the war has really started." Inside the chateau Hashim Thaci, the youthful Albanian guerrilla leader, wandered the corridors talking incessantly on his mobile phone. The Serbian delegates, most of whom were plucked from utter obscurity to which they subsequently returned, sat up carousing late into the night because they had nothing else to do. Using the Yugoslav Embassy in Paris as back-up, much of the work for their delegation was being done there or simply sent back to Belgrade. As the French had video cameras in the Albanian and Serbian conference rooms, with cables trailing to a lorry with blacked out windows outside, this may have been prudent. On the Serbian side, the question is whether Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ever had any intention of striking a deal. The evidence suggests that he did not. Indeed it suggests that he was taking a calculated risk that the talks would collapse because the Albanians would refuse to sign up to a deal which did not explicitly promise them a referendum on independence after three years and, even if they did, that Nato would not carry out its threat to bomb Yugoslavia. So, he gambled and lost. With threats that the KLA would be added to Washington's list of terrorist organisations and fearing a bloody and unchecked Serbian onslaught if they refused to sign, the Albanians agreed to the Rambouillet document on Feb 23 when talks were adjourned but said they would only sign when they resumed in Paris on March 15. Before he left Rambouillet, Ratko Markovic, the head of the Serbian delegation, wrote to the international negotiators hailing "major progress" and agreeing to talk about an "international presence" in Kosovo to implement the deal. When Markovic returned home he discovered that Milosevic had made his final decision. Still not believing that the Albanians would sign in Paris, nor in Nato's threat, Milosevic told his negotiators to put a red line through almost everything that had been negotiated over the past few months. He was raising the stakes. The Serbs and Albanians duly returned to Paris. In the cafe of the Kleber conference centre, where the talks now resumed, the Yugoslavs sat laughing and drinking. Then one of their junior diplomats ran in and said: "They are going to sign!" They were horrified. The Albanians had trumped the Serbs, whose intelligence services had failed to predict this move. Angry, and outmanoeuvred, they shrieked at the negotiators. One witness saw the diplomats flee the Serb room as Belgrade's envoys screamed: "Have you come to f us again?" Back home, Milosevic battened down the hatches. The regime claimed a new document allowing Nato wide-ranging rights in Serbia proper had been introduced at the last moment. This was untrue as the delegates had been given the paper at Rambouillet and instead of arguing about it there had ignored it. On March 22, Milosevic sacked Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, his head of military intelligence who had warned him not to call Nato's bluff. "When I heard Dimitrijevic was sacked," says Braca Grubacic, one of Serbia's sharpest analysts, "I knew we were going for war." At Nato headquarters, final preparations were made for a short sharp shock. The bombing, which began on March 24, was expected to last three days. Having lost the Rambouillet gamble, Milosevic raised the stakes again. If Nato was only anticipating a three-day campaign, he calculated that he could easily withstand this. It was to last 78 days. When it was over Jamie Shea, Nato's spokesman, reflected: "In football the winner is not the team that plays the best but the one that makes the least mistakes." Tim Judah is the author of Kosovo: War and Revenge, the first account of the Kosovo war. It will be published by Yale University Press on March 23. From Albangj at aol.com Wed Feb 9 21:37:35 2000 From: Albangj at aol.com (Albangj at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2000 21:37:35 EST Subject: [ALBSA-Info] McCain our supporter??!! Message-ID: <54.1376185.25d37e6f@aol.com> Not all that is written about McCain in the previous email is true. McCain has supported military intervention but NOT post war assistance to Kosovars. One of the plans that Democrats have is that they will provide some assistance to Kosovars from the Social Security surplus. For more information on McCain and his support to our cause please read his letter to Agim Kola, member of The Albanian Club of NY. This letter can be found and downloaded from www.albclub.com Alban Gjyrezi The Albanian Club of NY, Inc. alban at albclub.com From ipilika at wellesley.edu Thu Feb 10 11:44:36 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 11:44:36 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Serbs Nurse Rage After Attack in Kosovo City Message-ID: THE NEW YORK TIMES February 10, 2000 Serbs Nurse Rage After Attack in Kosovo City By CARLOTTA GALL MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 9 -- United Nations police officers apprehended a man here today who was slashing the tires of their cars and who lashed out at one policeman, injuring his eye, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said. It was a minor incident compared with the violence of last week, but it reflected the continuing tension and anger of Serbs living on the north side of the city. Five days after some of the worst violence that troops have seen in eight months of peacekeeping, many Serbs are still cursing and threatening foreigners in the street. A number of Serbs in Mitrovica, including more than a dozen interviewed on the street in recent days, do not appear to have altered their views since the war against NATO and the arrival of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. A large percentage of them attribute everything bad that has happened to the Albanians. As many as 10,000 Serbs live in the north part of this divided city, and almost a third of them are refugees from other parts of Kosovo. They possess a readiness to take things into their own hands and a measure of organization not found among Serbs living in the isolated enclaves around Kosovo where they are far more vulnerable to attack. The Serbs of Mitrovica see themselves as defending the only viable outpost of Serbian control in Kosovo against the Albanian majority. They are bolstered by an almost ethnically pure Serbian area stretching north behind them to the boundary with the rest of Serbia. This provides them with a direct, safe land connection. With an estimated population of 50,000 Serbs, the area represents 50 percent of the total left in Kosovo -- the largest concentration in the province. All of the dozen or so interviewed said the Serbian mobs that rampaged through Mitrovica on Thursday night, intimidating Albanians and leaving eight dead, were reacting to the grenade attack on a Serbian cafe that wounded 15 young people. "At that moment people remembered everything," said Oliver Ivanovic, president of the Serbian National Council and an acknowledged leader of the Serbian community. "The 20 Serbs killed in the area in the last seven months; the 28 people kidnapped and disappeared -- everyone has a reason to be angry. It was very difficult to control them." Mr. Ivanovic was on the streets Thursday night. A history teacher, Dragoljub Radenkovic, who fled his home in Vucitrn, a town about six miles southeast of Mitrovica that is now wholly populated by Albanians, says people are revolted. "For eight months journalists have only been writing about Serbs being killed," he said. "In eight months you never saw the Serbs killing Albanians. There was a lot pent-up inside people and it exploded." Among the Serbs, Mr. Ivanovic, a sophisticated, English-speaking businessman, who has become the main connection with the international peacekeepers and administrators in the region, was alone in acknowledging his people's recent crimes. "Very bad things happened," he said. "I cannot support that, but just ask that you understand it. I was feeling very angry too that night." Other Serbs, including his deputy, Vuko Antonijevic, appeared to applaud the crowd's actions that night. "I want to thank you for what you did," Mr. Antonijevic told a rally of 2,000 people on Monday. "You showed how much you love your city and how you can defend it against Islamic terrorism. You showed in the best way what is the Serbian answer for attacks on Serbian youth in coffee bars." Another speaker, Milan Ivanovic, a doctor from Mitrovica's hospital, ranted against the NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations officials for allowing Albanians to persecute the remaining Serbian population in Kosovo. "They are killing Serbs, they are putting Serbs in concentration camps in Kosovo and in Albania, and they are doing it in the presence of the United Nations mission," he said. Ordinary Serbs in the street repeated similar accusations, defending the expulsions of Albanians from their midst. "They did the same to us," said Smiljana Milosevic, whose grocery store backs up to the cafe, Le Bel Ami, where the grenade attack occurred. She said the Albanians still living on the north side, now under heavy protection of peacekeeping troops, should leave, "because there are no Serbs on the other side." But when asked how the violence could be resolved, most Serbs appeared unsure. Some said the curfew currently in force was good and improved their security. Others said the curfew had left them vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. Many say they cannot rely on the peacekeepers and United Nations police officers for security, and must therefore provide their own. "We are just defending ourselves, with our bare hands," said the storekeeper, Ms. Milosevic. The Serbs have a fairly well-organized defense here that is loyal to Mr. Ivanovic. It is made up mostly of tough young men who carry walkie-talkies and guard the bridge, inspecting Albanians who cross from the south side to the north. Whether the young men played a role in the violence is not known. Mr. Ivanovic says his organization is opposed to expelling all the Albanians from the north side of the city in order to make it all Serbian, because that would invite more attacks from Albanians. He is also against the partition of the Serb-dominated region from the rest of Kosovo. From ipilika at wellesley.edu Thu Feb 10 13:17:11 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:17:11 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] French deny they are pro-Serb in Kosova Message-ID: French deny they are pro-Serb in Kosovo By Bernard Edinger PARIS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - France's Defence Ministry, stung by accusations of partiality and incompetence in keeping ethnic Albanians and Serbs apart in volatile Kosovo, angrily insisted on Thursday that Paris was impartial in the conflict. "There is no favouritism by France. Our troops act scrupulously according to NATO guidelines," said ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau. He was answering questions about an article in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune saying French troops shirked duties in the southern Yugoslav province when it came to protecting ethnic Albanians. "Everyone knows the French contingent is in the most delicate of positions in Kosovo, in between two hostile communities" Bureau said. "The situation is not calm and it is getting worse but French authorities are determined to obtain results," he said. Bureau said some of the incidents reported by the Washington Post were "factually correct but lacked the background that would have explained what was happening". The Washington Post said it interviewed nearly a dozen United Nations police officers in the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica who said French troops were present but failed to help them when they were attacked last week by Serb civilians. The policemen, who asked their names not be published because of pressure from French area commanders, accused French troops of failing to rescue ethnic Albanians being beaten by mobs and refusing to admit them later to a French army hospital. The article also said the French declined to take part in operations against suspected Serb troublemakers in Mitrovica, the only Kosovo town where Serbs still control a neighbourhood. Army Colonel Henri Pelissier gave a different account at the Paris news briefing of the Mitrovica violence in which eight Albanians were killed by mobs following a grenade attack on a Serb cafe. "Our troops rescued 120 Albanian civilians that night and took them to safety," Pelissier said. He denied France had refused to treat wounded Albanians, saying the French took them to a Moroccan military hospital better equipped than the French installation. The French officials defended the professionalism of their troops, recalling the men involved, from the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment, underwent training in crowd control and use of non-lethal weapons before leaving France. They also said commanders of the KFOR peacekeeping force and United Nations representatives denied the U.S. newspaper report and praised the French. NATO is well aware of the widespread perception in Kosovo that the French have not acted decisively enough against hardliners in Mitrovica, but also realise the French have the toughest patch to police, a non-French diplomat told Reuters. "They have the trickiest position of all. They are literally in the firing line. Whereas elsewhere in Kosovo it's pretty safe for KFOR, here there's a virtual running conflict," he said. From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 10 19:01:17 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:01:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 5 Message-ID: <20000211000117.22492.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com> THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 10, 2000, Thursday Pg. 20 The Balkans: legacy of war: Do-gooders fail to heal Kosovo wounds A flood of highly paid international aid workers - the third invasion in 12 months - has served only to spark local resentment By PATRICK BISHOP BODY: AT THE headquarters of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the body charged with persuading people to abandon the bad old ways, the notice board dedicated to recording progress on "Elections and Democratisation" is poignantly empty. Outside, the streets are choked with expensive four-wheel-drives driven by middle-aged white males accompanied by youthful female interpreters. As night falls, Pristina's bars and restaurants fill up with the "internationals" looking for relaxation after a hard day of meetings. Kosovo is undergoing its third invasion in 12 months but this time the occupying force is not in uniform. The new arrivals are a disparate crew of do-gooders led by the big battalions of the OSCE, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) and the European Union, and supported by countless irregulars from the world's non-governmental humanitarian organisations. You do not have to be a yokel to marvel at the scale of the operation, nor a cynic to wonder what is going on. What are they doing, all these men and women, with their purposeful air, smart ski jackets and trilling mobile phones? It is a question that Kosovars frequently ask as they dodge the arcs of filthy slush from the wheels of the 4x4s. Who are the beneficiaries of all this conspicuous expenditure? Among the blacked-out, unheated blocks of flats and the hangdog women scouring the market for cheap food, it is hard to suppress the thought that the winners of the peace so far are Toyota, Nokia, Timberland and the Pilsner Urquell brewing company. As the anniversary of the Kosovo war looms, both Kosovars and the outsiders who are supposed to be helping them to rebuild their lives are beset with frustration. No one doubts that life is better than a year ago. Yet the rate of recovery lags well behind the expectations of the local population. Despite their insistence that they are doing their best, the "internationals" cannot disguise their unease that the massive effort being expended on the enterprise is not producing results. Just when it seems that stability is returning, there is some dreadful reminder of the hatred and violence still throbbing in the dingy streets and blasted villages. At the turn of the year it seemed that security, if not peace, had come to Kosovo. The surge of murders following the war had subsided and the killing rate was down to one or so a week. The presence of 50,000 Nato KFOR soldiers appeared to be adequate protection for the Serb and Roma minorities. Then last week a UN-escorted bus was attacked with rockets and two elderly Serbs killed. In revenge attacks, seven Albanians were murdered and six wounded, and this despite a KFOR presence that would, as the UN points out, be the equivalent of two million soldiers and social workers on the streets of Britain. The most obvious flashpoint is the northern town of Mitrovica, where Serbs live on one side and the majority Albanians on the other, separated by a bridge guarded by French troops. It is the scene of regular demonstrations and stand-offs. "They want to drive me out; they want to kill me," said a 26-year-old former civil servant, who can see his office on the far side of the bridge but is too frightened to go to work. "But then, we don't like the Albanians either. We don't want to live with them." Reconciliation is many generations away, as the "internationals" have quickly recognised. No one is wasting any time trying to get Kosovo's inhabitants to like each other. It is enough that, propelled by self-interest, they should work together, taking over some responsibility for running the place. Nineteen embryonic administrative departments have been established, with the main ones such as health, education, local administration and finance taking their first few faltering steps. So far only the three main Albanian parties are on board, but that is something, given the potential for internal strife. Until elections are held, Kosovo will be run by an Interim Administrative Council, a partnership of the Albanians and the UN. Once again, the Serbs have yet to sign up. Local representatives from the Gracanica area have indicated their willingness to get on board, but they are being held back by militants from Mitrovica assumed to be under the control of Slobodan Milosevic. Until Serbs feel safe in Kosovo, co-operation is bound to be hesitant and conditional. Recent events suggest that trouble-makers still feel they have little to fear from the new regime. But after seven months in which all but the most heinous criminals have had to be set free while awaiting trials that may never take place, the rule of law is tentatively taking root. Last month 137 judges, prosecutors and magistrates were sworn in and courts have begun processing the backlog of cases. But there is still a crippling lack of police to arrest and investigate. About 2,000 international police are deployed, far fewer than the 6,000 that the head of Unmik, Dr Bernard Kouchner, has been pleading for. Nor is the police academy set up to train a local force capable of producing the numbers needed. Recruits are certainly not attracted by the salaries. Local people are bitter at the pitiful pay being offered to the men and women needed to rebuild Kosovo. A doctor gets pounds 120 a month and a teacher pounds 95. A local translator will get four times that. Top international staff at the OSCE can expect up to 100 times more. To the resentful young, the "internationals" make an absurd sight as they bustle around, clogging the traffic. Memories are short and freedom has not filled their bellies or put flesh on the bones of their dreams. The new occupation may be a benign one, but Kosovo is still - physically and metaphorically - a place of darkness. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 10 19:08:57 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:08:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 6 Message-ID: <20000211000857.23867.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com> THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 10, 2000, Thursday Pg. 21 HEADLINE: The Balkans: legacy of war: A populace blinded by patriotism and politics His country may lie in ruins after last year's Nato attacks, but Milosevic is a master at persuading Serbians he is not to blame BYLINE: By BORIS JOHNSON BODY: HERE is what they have been through, this crowd of Serbs now sitting on the steps of a forest lodge on a mountain outside Belgrade. They have been bombed by Nato for three months. Many of them have lost relatives and are wearing little black oblong badges to indicate bereavement. When Nato came in, they fled on their puttering red Zastava tractors in sheer terror of reprisals. They have lost their homes, many of them smashed and burned by Albanians. They have no jobs. They have no real hope of going back to Kosovo; and what, I ask, do they think of the man who brought them to this pass? There are now 265,000 such "displaced persons" in camps, barracks and hostels around Serbia, and there was a time when we Western journalists fondly imagined that their presence would be such a reproach to Slobodan Milosevic and his asinine policy that he must fall. So I put the question again to Stanko Antic, a lanky fellow with rug-like hair and piercing blue Slavic eyes, and immediately they all set up a clamour of protest. Old women, busily crocheting stringy oddments, get up and join the crowd. "Why are you blaming Milosevic?" demands Stanko. "Our president did not force us to leave. It was 19 foreign governments and Clinton. "Who do you have in charge of your country? A queen, yes? We love Milosevic as much as you love your queen. Milosevic is not doing bad things to his own people, like Vuk Draskovic [an opposition leader] intends to. Milosevic is not kissing Albright's hand!" he says, and there is much nodding and muttering of assent. Listening to Stanko, it is hard to believe that even these avowedly "simple peasants" could be guilty of such gross self-deception; except that one sees this everywhere in Serbia. Milosevic encourages them to believe they are victims, even when it was they who began the cycle of violence. I was there on the road south of Pristina in early June, when the great convoy came over the brow of the hill, with mattresses piled on the same wood-framed carts now parked around. They were escaping in fear because Serb troops and policemen, with the help, no doubt, of Serb villagers, had responded to the Nato bombing by launching purges. As soon as the air strikes began, the homes of ethnic Albanians were torched and looted, and the Albanians were booted out. Weren't they? Oh no, says Jovan Jovanovic. "Many of the Albanians went of their own free will. They just decided to leave their houses during the bombing and go into the woods for a while. We had the keys to their houses and we didn't touch a thing." "We were crying when they left," says Mladen Antic, slightly overdoing things. Perhaps they genuinely believe it; perhaps not.The important thing, politically, is that, in the words of Stanko, "people from Kosovo are behind Milosevic 100 per cent". Of the 250 seats in the Serb parliament, 38 notionally represent Kosovo, and, in the past, Milosevic has had them in his back pocket. That is why he is making such a frenzied effort to register these people for the vote. The chances are - since he broadly makes the rules, and since the Albanians boycott the elections - that Milosevic will be able to claim his Kosovo bloc vote. Even if he does not, there are other reasons for thinking that he will hang on to power for at least a while longer. The army has remained loyal. Milosevic, who has never shown any previous enthusiasm for decorations, has dispensed about 5,000 gongs to campaign veterans. The economy is weak, in the sense that the dinar has declined from six to the German mark at the time of the bombing, to 22, and an old age pension for a month - 50 dinars - will only buy a short cab ride. Yet there is money around. The regime has decided to let the black market rip, so that the wayside is littered with hawkers of bootleg petrol. The lights are working again, and every night the RTS state news drums home the message: that Slobo and his patriotic supporters are rebuilding Serbia. Some of the bombed buildings are just as Nato left them, but around others the scaffolding is up, and the remains of bridges are being dragged from the Danube. It is true that if you talk to sophisticated Belgraders, they will assure you that they wish Milosevic was gone; that they despise him and his wife, and the corrupt cronyist culture that surrounds them and their children. But if you ask them to pick the man they would like to replace him, they groan. The opposition has made a hash of things. There might have been a moment in August and September, when the distress at the loss of Kosovo was at its peak, for a mass protest movement which could have carried him from power. But throughout the crucial period, Vuk Draskovic, the bearded charismatic on whom so many Western hopes have been pinned in the past, has been unable to decide whether he is primarily an opponent of Milosevic, or whether he is a Serb nationalist. And that, fundamentally, is the dilemma which Milosevic has exploited to stay in power. If you are a Serb, you do not mind Western attacks on Milosevic. But you do mind attacks on your own country, and Milosevic has comfortably sheltered himself behind the natural patriotism of the Serbs. In the end, it will not be enough for Slobo to blame the people's ills on sanctions. People will see through his trick of using resentment of the West to fortify his position. Though it must be said that, in earning the resentment of the Serbs, the west has certainly helped Milosevic to stay in power. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 10 19:00:16 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:00:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph 3 Message-ID: <20000211000016.21915.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com> THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 10, 2000, Thursday Pg. 20 The Balkans: legacy of war: The terror is over but peace brings its own problems Rebuilding shattered lives and homes is a slow process in Pristina. Julius Strauss reports on the shadow of organised crime and hatred BYLINE: By JULIUS STRAUSS BODY: FOR the Deliu family freedom in Kosovo has come at a terrible price. In one of the pivotal massacres of the war in September 1998, more than 20 family members, from an 18-month-old baby to a grandfather, were rounded up and butchered by Serb paramilitaries. Besnik, then five, watched as his mother was slashed to death in front of him. The family's homes were burned down and they hid in woods for months during Nato air strikes. Of the young men, Ymer and his brother Enver spent the 15-month war carrying out hit-and-run attacks against Serb forces, earning their village a reputation as one of the most dangerous in the Drenica region. Their unit killed dozens of Serb police and Yugoslav soldiers. Today Ymer has mixed emotions. The terror of the past decade when Kosovo Albanians had to run their own underground schools, university and ministries, in protest at Serb oppression, is over. But while he is proud of his contribution to the war effort, the horror his family suffered leaves little room for satisfaction. Such emotions are common to the Kosovars, whose political and social life is still barbed with hatred. Even the most liberal Albanian commentators believe that expecting the enmity to dissipate so soon is a Western pipe-dream. Daut Dauti, an analyst with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, said: "When the Albanians came back they thought that the Western superpowers would have this place fixed in no time." Instead organised crime has flourished and rising property prices have spawned a whole industry of professional evictors. The former Kosovo Liberation Army is also a major problem. Officially it was disbanded shortly after Nato arrived and has now been transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps and handed some civic duties. The head of the United Nations mission, Bernard Kouchner, and the German commander of the KFOR peacekeepers, Gen Klaus Reinhardt, recently invited journalists to inspect a KPC work group hacking ice from the roads in Pristina. The intended message was clear - the unruly former guerrilla army had been successfully reinvented as a force for public good. The reality is different. The former leader of the KLA, Hashim Thaci, is the most powerful of the Kosovo Albanians, even though his party would probably be roundly beaten by Ibrahim Rugova's pacifists if elections were held tomorrow. He controls widespread business interests in the capital, and his own secret police and Albanians say his underlings collect illegal taxes. There are five illegal KLA police stations in Pristina alone, although they are being slowly transformed into "neighbourhood watch" centres as part of a determined effort by the Royal Green Jackets. Mr Thaci's lieutenant, Remi, the KPC Pristina commandant, has taken over at least one nightspot and is reported to have other sources of illicit income. A Nato source said: "The vice business has been stitched up by Remi . . . prostitutes, cigarettes and low-level contraband." Other KLA commanders are known to pursue similar interests. And yet there are some positive signs. Baton Haxhiu, the editor of the Kosovo daily, Koha, has campaigned against revenge attacks on the remaining Serbs. He said: "The killing is the work of extremists. Forty per cent of the population have guns and there are a lot of what we call post-war patriots who sat out the war in Germany or Switzerland and now want to prove themselves. "But we need police to deal with criminals, not moralising from the West. The streets are dark and there is almost no law enforcement. That's why these people can get away with it." In Pristina at least there seems to have been a sea change in public opinion. Last year the majority of Albanians tolerated and even quietly supported revenge attacks. But following the killing of a Serb professor by a mob in November, Albanian witnesses broke with tradition and informed on the killer to UN police. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Fri Feb 11 07:36:28 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 04:36:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Boston event Message-ID: <20000211123628.27007.qmail@web123.yahoomail.com> Preventative Conflict Resolution: Settling Disputes Before Violence Erupts Tuesday, February 15 ? 6 - 7:30 p.m. You are cordially invited to attend a panel presentation on ?Preventative Conflict Resolution: Settling Disputes Before Violent Crises Erupt? on Tuesday, February 15, 2000 at 6 p.m. on the 16th floor, room 16M at Foley, Hoag & Eliot, LLP., One Post Office Square, Boston. Moderator Sara Cobb, Ph.D., Communications Executive Director, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School President, Dialogue International which focuses on conflict management and organizational change. Participants l *Saeed Shafqat, Ph.D., Political Science Professor of Public Adminstration, Civil Services Academy, Pakistan His publications include numerous articles on foreign policy, South Asia and conflict resolution. l *Tetyana Senyushkina, Ph.D., Political Science & Sociology Associate Professor, Simferopol State University, Ukraine Chair of the Crimean Branch of the Ukrainian Society of Conflictology. l Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., Clinical Psychology Fellow, Harvard Negotiation Project, Harvard Law School Developed programs on mediation and communication skills for school systems in Eastern and Central Europe, including Serbia, Croatia & Macedonia. Collaborating with Roger Fisher on a book on the role of emotion in negotiation. * U.S. State Department International Visitors. Time: 6 p.m. ? 7:30 p.m. Contact person: Jennifer Kish Price: $15 Student/Senior 617-542-8995 $25 members jkish at worldboston.org $35 non-members Hors d?oeuvres will be served. Please RSVP by February 14. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Thu Feb 10 21:57:05 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 21:57:05 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Event in Boston Message-ID: Preventative Conflict Resolution: Settling Disputes Before Violence Erupts Tuesday, February 15 ? 6 - 7:30 p.m. You are cordially invited to attend a panel presentation on "Preventative Conflict Resolution: Settling Disputes Before Violent Crises Erupt" on Tuesday, February 15, 2000 at 6 p.m. on the 16th floor, room 16M at Foley, Hoag & Eliot, LLP., One Post Office Square, Boston. Moderator Sara Cobb, Ph.D., Communications Executive Director, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School President, Dialogue International which focuses on conflict management and organizational change. Participants l *Saeed Shafqat, Ph.D., Political Science Professor of Public Adminstration, Civil Services Academy, Pakistan His publications include numerous articles on foreign policy, South Asia and conflict resolution. l *Tetyana Senyushkina, Ph.D., Political Science & Sociology Associate Professor, Simferopol State University, Ukraine Chair of the Crimean Branch of the Ukrainian Society of Conflictology. l Daniel Shapiro, Ph.D., Clinical Psychology Fellow, Harvard Negotiation Project, Harvard Law School Developed programs on mediation and communication skills for school systems in Eastern and Central Europe, including Serbia, Croatia & Macedonia. Collaborating with Roger Fisher on a book on the role of emotion in negotiation. * U.S. State Department International Visitors. Time: 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Contact person: Jennifer Kish Price: $15 Student/Senior 617-542-8995 $25 members jkish at worldboston.org $35 non-members Hors d'oeuvres will be served. Please RSVP by February 14. From ipilika at wellesley.edu Fri Feb 11 10:44:41 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:44:41 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Koha Ditore Surroi - All Losers in Mitrovica Crisis Message-ID: KOHA DITORE - Feb 10 SURROI: ALL LOSERS IN MITROVICA CRISIS Koha Ditore on page three carried an editorial by Veton Surroi, the paper's publisher, focused on the Mitrovica issue and challenges this problem continues to pose to the international community and Kosovars. Surroi wrote inter alia: "This is how it is today, and if it keeps on going like this, everybody will come out of this crisis as losers. Albanians, because they will be victimized in northern Mitrovica; they will be radicalized to find an answer to violence; they will lose from their perspective other vital problems; they will face new realities in Mitrovica at the time of defining Kosovo's status (and Mitrovica will be one of the hostages of independence). All of these things will be followed by diminishing sympathies of the international factor. As for Serbs: their enclaves will pay the price of the negative symbol which northern Mitrovica carries, especially the definition of legitimate ethnic Serb rights, as rights derived from the presence of the Serb state in Kosovo. The international community: Mitrovica will be an everyday reminder of the failure to implement resolution 1244, and how Milosevic tried and managed to make a problem out of the international administration despite the presence of an enemy with 50,000 soldiers of the strongest political and military alliance in the history of mankind. The hope of the international administration that Mitrovica would be solved by itself (or "after my mandate") only postpones this issue, therefore definitively linking it to discussions on the permanent status of Kosovo. Now maybe is the moment when the Mitrovica issue could be solved with fewer victims and violence than at any time in the future. Of course, the solution cannot be immediate, not even by using classic means of establishing law. Let us say that KFOR puts Mitrovica in a military ring, and this will happen if there is a request to arrest and remove extremists and weapons from both sides of the town. The military administration once again, even though in more convenient circumstances, will face three other aspects to the Mitrovica problem; first, to establish a civil administration with representatives from all segments of the population; second, to establish an economic dynamics that would move Mitrovica from the position in which it is stuck; and third--this is characteristic for all of Kosovo--, the definition of rights of minorities. Mitrovica, from this point of view, must remind us of the long road that is still before us in order to enjoy the fragile freedom. One that does not believe in fragility let him ask the Albanians of northern Mitrovica". From ipilika at wellesley.edu Fri Feb 11 10:46:54 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 10:46:54 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Six Balkan countries agree to increase trade cooperation Message-ID: Six Balkan countries agree to increase trade cooperation SKOPJE, Feb 10 (AFP) - Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding in Skopje Thursday to improve their cooperation in trade and transport. This is a significant step in support of collaborative efforts by Balkan states of the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) and the programme will represent the first regionally linked project in support of the Stability Pact, said Macedonian Finance Minister Nikola Gruevski. The aim of the initiative, supported by the World Bank, EU and United States, is to reduce costs of trade and transport. Gruevski told to the press that at the same time, the purpose is "to reduce smuggling and corruption." He said the total value of the project was 115 million dollars (euros). It includes structural improvements to border crossings, technical assistance to customs administrations, computerization and improved exchange of information on border control. From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Fri Feb 11 22:18:59 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 22:18:59 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Tirana etruske Message-ID: KOHA JONE Hyjnesha Aferdite ne emrin e qytetit Historia e Tiranes nuk ka pse te mbeshtetet ne legjenda Nga Ilir Mati Me vjen keq kur per historine e qytetit te Tiranes ku kam lindur, i meshohet fort deshmive gojedhanore, kur dihet shkencerisht se keto deshmi te rendesishme nuk merren kurre si te dores se pare. Historia e Tiranes nuk ka pse te mbeshtetet ne legjenda, nderkohe qe kemi faktet per te shqyrtuar. Ne rradhe te pare, persa i perket prejardhjes te vete emrit te Tiranes, me duket se ka deshmi me te favorshme per t'iu afruar se vertetes, se sa perralla e pashait turk qe mori pergjigje nga plaka e cila thuhet se po tirte, nderkohe qe emri i vendit eksistonte shume kohe me pare se turqit te dukeshin ne Ballkan. Une po ve ne dukje dy nga keto deshmi, te cilat shkenca i quan te dores se pare: ato arkeologjike dhe toponimite. Nder deshmite arkeologjike rreth Fushes se Tiranes, po permendim Zgerdheshin, Persqopin dhe muret ne Malin e Dajtit, te tria qendra te rendesishme te kultures sone, shume pak, per te mos thene aspak te vizituara edhe nga njerez te pasionuar me historine. Keto vendbanime jane datuar nga specialistet si te shekullit te trete para Krishtit. Per Zgerdheshin ka zera qe mbeshtesin arkeologun austriak J.G.Han, i cili per here te pare shprehu mendinin se prane atij fshati duhej kerkuar Albanopolisi i hartes se Ptolemeut. Punimet arkeologjike ne kete vendbanim jane nderprere ka kohe, pa nxjerre ndonje rezultat te sigurte ne lidhje me emrin e tij. Nuk jane gjetur as varrezat e atj qyteti te math, te rrethuar me mure te forte, te cilat mund te nxirrnin ne drite material te pasur arkeologjik qe do te ndihmonte per historine edhe te treves. Muret ne malin e Dajtit, mbi ish kampin e punetoreve, jane te paprekura nga arkeologet. Miku im Genc Celo me ka vene ne dijeni, se dikur aty nga vitet gjashtedhjete, gjate nje eskursioni me Neritan Ceken, ky i fundit aty ka gjetur nje monedhe. Germimet ne Persqop, te pakta, kane dhjetvjecare qe jane nderprere, edhe ketu, pa arritur ne ndonje perfundim ne lidhje me emrin e vendbanimit. Meqenese pervec pozicionit te perafert ne harten e Ptolemeut, nuk ka shpjegime te tjera ne lidhje me hipotezen Zgerdhesh-Albanopolis, per Albanopolisin mund te ngerme edhe nje dyshim tjeter nisur nga toponimi Petralba, Petrela e sotme. Petralba qe do te thote guri i albes. Ndoshta me marrjen ne konsiderate te ketij toponimi, shtojme nje argument me shume pervec aferise ne harten e Ptolemeut, per te gjetur Albanopolisin. Nese udhetoni duke ardhur nga veriu neper Fushen e Tiranes ose nga perendimi neper rrjedhen e poshtme te Erzenit, per te zene luginen e Shkumbinit, pra per te dale ne rrugen Egnatia, si shenje do t'iu sherbeje shkembi i Petreles, mbas te cilit ne faqen e malit eshte Persqopi. Ne kete rast mund te mendojme se edhe Persqopi ka gjase te jete Albanopolis i hartes se Ptolemeut, me gurin e madh dhe te larte perpara si shenje orjentimi. Edhe vendosja ne harte e qytetit nga vete Ptolemeu, aty ku eshte distanca me e vogel midis dy luginave te ndara me male, si edhe orjentimi i qytetit nga ana jugore e maleve, jep idene se Albanopolisi mund te jete edhe ne Persqopin e sotem. Permenda sa me siper, per te ndaluar ne lidhjen midis emrit te vendqendrimit Albanopolis, dhe kohes se ndertimit te vendbanimeve Zgerdhesh dhe Persqop. Ne te dy rastet kemi te bejme me ndertime te fundit te shek.IV p.K.-shek.III p.K. mbi ndertime protourbane. Duke kerkuar ne historine e lashte te pellgut te Adriatikut te kesaj periudhe, kam vene re se ne kete kohe romaket, gjate luftes njeqindvjecare, perzune shume kundershtare te tyre nga Gadishulli Italik. Per te treguar se sa e ashper ka qene lufta e romakeve ne kete kohe ndaj kundershtareve te tyre, kam zgjedhur nje cope nga Historia e Italise e Indro Montanelit, Fabri Editore Milano 1994 : "Ndryshe nga romaket e sotem qe bejne shaka te medha, romaket e antikitetit cdo gje e merrnin shume seriozisht. Dhe vecanerisht, atyre kur u hipte ne koke qe te shkaterronin nje armik, jo vetem i hidheshin me lufte, e nuk pushonin deri sa ta mundnin edhe pse ju kushtonte ushtri pas ushtrie dhe dinare mbi dinare, por i hynin pastaj ne shtepi dhe nuk i linin gure mbi gure... Ishte lufte e gjate dhe e panderprere, te mundurve nuk iu linin as sy per te qare. Rralle eshte pare ne histori te njerezimit te zhduket nje popull nga faqja e dheut dhe nje popull tjeter qe te fshij gjurmet e bemave te tij me aq armiqesi dhe egersi.." Asnjeri nuk di me saktesi se c'u bene keta njerez te trajtuar keshtu. Ne kete rast, bazuar ne ndertime te shekullit te IV-III p.K. dhe ne toponimin Albanopolis, qyteti i albaneve, kemi te drejte te ngreme hipotezen se mund te jene albanet, banore rreth liqenit Alban, te debuar nga Gadishulli Italik, te cilet ndertuan vendbanimin e tyre te ri Albanopolisin. Kjo hipoteze, mund te qendroje e ngritur aq sa edhe hipotezat e tjera, derisa te dhena te sigurta, nder te cilat rezultatet e studimeve te mbeshtetura nga germimet arkeologjike, te vertetojne te kunderten. Me 398 p.K, gjate luftes njeqindvjecare ndermjet romakeve te Romes dhe etruskeve te Veios, ndodhi qe ujerat e liqenit Alban te ngriheshin gjate thatesires. Romaket e quajten si shenje te zotave, por, meqe nuk dinin te kuptonin shenjat, zune rob nje prift etrusk dhe e nxoren para senatit. Ja cfare iu tha prifti etrusk nga Veio : " Ne librin mbi fatin dhe ne disiplinen etruskeve eshte shkruar se pakesimi i ujerave te liqenit Alban, eshte e lidhur me shkaterrimin e qytetit etrusk te Veios." Por ujerat e liqenit kontrolloheshin fshehtesisht nga banoret me ane te nje kanali nentokesor shkarkimi. Ate vere ata i kishin mbyllur portat e kanalit ! Kanali ishte 1200 m i gjate dhe eshte aty edhe sot e kesaj dite. Ne luften 100-vjecare, etrusket u munden dhe u skllaveruan, u vrane ose u shiten nga romaket. Shume te tjere u larguan pergjithmone ne vende te reja. Turma te medha, disa mijera njerez, u hodhen edhe ne bregun lindor te Adriatikut. Ne historine e Romes keto shperngulje kane qene te shpeshta. Psh, mbas shkaterrimit te 70 qyteteve te Epirit, Roma mori me vete 150 000 skllever. Po ashtu me vone Roma, shpesh ka kthyer ne vendin e tyre, matane Adriatikut, ne brigjet e Ilirise, me mijera njerez. Hipotezes se ngritur i vine ne ndihme edhe toponime te tjera te mberritura deri me sot. Gjate nje bashkebisedimi mbi formimin e qyteterimit etrusk ne Universitetin per te Huaj te Peruxhias, ne korrik 1999, profesor Camporeale me pyeti per raportin midis etruskeve dhe shqiptareve. Meqenese kisha kuptuar se profesor Camporeale, ashtu si edhe profesore te tjere, e njihte punen e "zhdukjes" te misterit etrusk nga francesi Majani me ane te shqipes, i shpjegova atij me shume kujdes se nuk me intereson ky kendveshtrim, madje e quaj te gabuar. Jam i prirur te kuptoj ne se ne gjuhen dhe ne kulturen shqiptare gjenden ose jo gjurme qe mund te deshmojne per roporte te hershme midis kulturave te dy popujve qe flisnin keto gjuhe ne basenin e Adriatikut. Si shembull i permenda profesorit toponimet e me poshteme : ARBAN, ALBANOPOLIS, PRISKE, DAITI, TUJAN , TIRANE, TUFINA, TALE, LANA, LINXA, FAGU Shpreha mendimin se keto toponime duket se permbajne informacion direkt per mundesine e pranise te kultures etruske ne zonat ku ato ndodhen dhe i takon etruskologjise per t'i verifikuar. Profesori me dha te drejte. Toponimet e mesiperme ndodhen ne zonen e Tiranes. Priska, eshte emri i mbretit te pare etrusk, burrit te Tanes, i cili thuhet se ka themeluar Romen. Ne historine e Romes jane tre mbreter etruske. Turan, eshte hyjnesha Aferdite e etruskeve. Ita, eshte Zeusi I etruskeve. Vini re se sa afer gjeografisht jane toponimet e me siperme me Albanopolisin. Perendia me e larte e etruskeve ishte Tin ose Tinia, te cilen romaket e quajten Giove. Ne nje vazo te gjetur ne Dodone e cila ruhet ne muzeun e Luvrit shkruhet : THEOZOTO. Theo ne greqisht eshte zot, pra kemi : zot- zoto. Te Buzuku kemi: tinzot.Te etrusket kemi: Tin, Tinia. Ne etruskologji, perendia Tin mban ne dore tre rrufe : me te paren lajmeron (bubullin), me te dyten shfaqet (vetetin) dhe me te treten qellon (shkrepetin). Ne fjalet shqip : vete-tin , shkrepe-tin, bubull-in , mos valle kemi edhe emrin e perendise Tin, simboli i te cilit ishte rrufeja? Perendi tjeter e etruskeve eshte dhe Ita. Vendin ne te cilin kjo perendi ka lere shqiptaret e therrasin Tale ose edhe Itale. Ne nekropolin e Durresit eshte gjetur emri Eitalia, datuar ne shekullin IV -III p.K. Nga keto qe permendem me siper, nxitemi te kerkojme nese toponimi Tufina ka lidhje me tu Tina, pra me kuptimin: te perendia Tina. Po ashtu te kerkojme nese toponimi Dajti ka lidhje me emrin e perendise Ita, Tu ita, Ta Ita, te perendia Ita. Ne se Priska e Madhe dhe dy Priskat e Vogla ruajne emrin e mbretit te famshem Prisko. Ne se Lana Fagu eshte Lana Fegu qe haset ne epigrafine etruske. Nese Tirane, Tirkan, Tyrann, Tujan ka lidhje me hyjneshen etruske Turan. Pra, ne se ne kete zone te Ilirise, kemi deshmi te mbrritura deri me sot te kontakteve kulturore te popullsise ndoshta etruske te ardhur me vendasit. Sot si emer vendi kemi Shkallen e Tujanit dhe fshatin Tujan, fshat strategjik ne nje nga grykat me te rendesishme te kalimit te rruges antike drejt lindjes. Ne fshatin Brar, kam degjuar se grykes i thone edhe Turan. Ambasadori venecian, me 1591, kur udhetoj nga Shengjini i Lezhes per ne Oher, nuk e permend Tiranen. Ne zonen per te cilen po flasim, ai permend Lacin, Prezen dhe Petrelen, por Tiranen jo. Permend se rreze malit kishte qendra te banuara, por Tiranen, jo. Si qender e banuar, ketu ku eshte sot, Tirana mund te mos kete ekzistuar, sepse ambasadori do ta kishte vene re gjate kalimit te detyruar neper fushe, por fusha emerin e kishte ne ate kohe, pa ardhur turqit dhe pashallaret e tyre, emer te cilin na e thote Barleti Tyrann. Kerkimet arkeologjike ne qytete antike qe permendem me siper, do te ndihmonin te kuptonim ne se keto shenja jane te rastit, te keqinterpretuara ose kane vlere. Do te na ndihmonin po ashtu, te thellonim studimet tona per te kuptuar me mire shkembimet kulturore midis popujve te lashte qe banonin ne pellgun e Adriatikut, dy popuj prej te cileve ishin etrusket dhe iliret. Sa per mua, une jam i bindur se emri i Tiranes nuk ka te bej me krijime mesjetare. Ai mund te kete ardhur nga emri i hyjneshes te cilen iliret dhe greket e therrisnin Aferdite, latinet Venere, dhe etrusket te ndjekur nga romaket, ndoshta te shperngulur nga Italia dhe te vendosur rreze Dajtit ne shekullin e trete para Krishtit, i thonin Turan. Emer qe te Barleti del Tyrann dhe sot shqiptohet Tirane. Ky emer rezulton 2700 vjet i deshmuar ne epigrafine etruske. 11 February, 2000 From aalibali at yahoo.com Fri Feb 11 23:19:52 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 20:19:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] From the archives Message-ID: <20000212041952.12711.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> Commenting on Tom Lantos' Letters By Isuf Hajrizi There is no doubt Rep. Tom Lantos (D- Cal.) is a committed fighter for human rights and democracy. His long list of fights for justice, include his strong objections to Serbian repression of the Albanians in Kosova, discrimination of the Albanians in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as well as in the rest of former Yugoslavia. However, in recent letters to Secretary of State Warren Christopher and fellow members of Congress, Lantos described in painful detail, his recent private "fact-finding trip" to Greece and Albania. In his report, however, the California Democrat leaves much to be desired. Lantos said he visited Southern Albania to examine treatment of ethnic Greeks in the region, which he found to be unsatisfactory. To this end, while observations of our legislators regarding human rights in the region are most welcome, they should, however, be even-handed and objective. Lantos said he visited Greece before crossing over to Albania. One would think that a man of his stature, would stop for a few moments to acquaint himself with the situation of several hundred thousand Albanians in Greece. It would not have taken long for the Congressman not only to see widespread discrimination of Albanians by Greek authorities, but the Greek denial of their physical existence. Furthemore, recent Albanians in Greece, not only are denied their ethnic identity, but many are forced to change their names into Greek before getting permission to enter the country where they are largely used for "coolie" work. Greece says it is doing Albania a favor by employing its migrant workers, which is partially true, but Greek businessmen are exploiting these workers by paying them several times less the minimum wage and giving them jobs most Greeks do not want. Lantos says he is "very concerned" about the treatment of ethnic Greeks but has no regard for Albanians in Greece. This is seriously disappointing. The Congressman should be reminded that Greece, which claims to be one of the world's oldest democracies, does not reckognize minorities living within its borders. Minorities lose their national and ethnic identity, thus technically becoming Greek by force. Such is the case with a large Albanian minority in northern Greece, called the Chams. As for discrimination on education and the closing of six Greek schools in southern Albania, if Lantos had bothered to look further, he would have found out that they were not closed because they were Greek, but because there were not enough Greek students to fill them. Such assessment come from team experts who have fully investigated the situation there. The Mission of the Council of Europe, in a 1992 report said the conditions in the Greek schools were "quite compatible with international standards." As for their attendace by Greek students, the report added: "Many of these [schools] were far from attaining the normal minimum number of pupils required, and in some cases a school had been kept open with hardly any pupils at all." The MCE report went on to say that "this practice of keeping open schools cannot possibly be justified in economic terms." A careful observer would have found that if there were schools closed later inthis region, they were closed for lack ofstudents and not lack of fair treatment ofethnic Greeks by the Albanian government. Of course, this is not to say that some Albanian law enforcement officers do no abuse their position, at times mistreating citizens of all ethnic backgrounds. This is plain stupid behavior on their part and should be dealt with properly by the government. Albania is trying to work closely with Interpol to educate its police forces in dealang with the public. It may take some time. Lantos also complained that his companion - Nicholas Gage, President of the Panepirotic Foundation - was denied an entry visa by the Albanian government. While Gage may be a prominent writer, through his preaching of alleged discrimination of Greeks in Albania, he also encourages unnecessary conflicts between the two groups, which the Congressman agreed that if left alone, they get along just fine. There were several terrorist attacks by Greek bandits against Albanian citizens inside Albania last year suspected to have been spurned in part by inflammatory rhetoric from "concerned" activists like Gage. Tirane's decision to treat Gage as persona non grata at this time should not be mixed with the phenomenon of democracy but more as a policy decision. There is a mile-long list of people who are not welcomed in the U.S. This does not mean the U.S. is not democratic. When President Sali Berisha visited the U.S. last year, Gage misinformed Boston University to withdraw its decision to give Berisha a promised honorary degree in the last moment, thus implicating the respected university into an ugly adventure. It is surprising to see Lantos allowing himself to be the victim of such a group to the point that he allows a member of it to write a very slanted "fact-finding" report on Albania. Lantos called the "report" an "excellent summary" and attached it to official Congressional letterhead. In the report the names of Albanian towns and regions are used in Greek - Northern Epiros for southern Albania, Argyrokastro for Gjirokaster, Agioi Saranta for Sarande, Chimatra for Himare - suggesting the group does not recognize the legitimacy d the region, thus hinting on territorial claims despite the fact that this is an internationally recognized border. Athens itself reckognizes this border and uses the correct names. Greece and Albania are for the first time in recent history, working to improve their relationship on all fields - economic, political, social and cultural. Inflammatory statements only serve to defeat this goal, which if allowed to flourish, would bring much needed economic prosperity and political stability to the region. Albanian Foreign Minister Alfred Serreqi was in Greece this week. Greece will soon open a new consulate in Korce, and its president visted Albania in March. Before our legislators in Congress subscribe to their colleague's complaints on Democracy in Albania, it would be wise to challenge themselves and Lantos to visit northern Greece to witness the unfair treatment of Albanians there and to consider the progress the two sides have made in improving their relationship. (Courtesy of Illyria, May 1996) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Mon Feb 14 23:03:23 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:03:23 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Lajme nga Gjirokastra Message-ID: Koha Jone 15 shkurt 2000 Qyteti i gurte i njerezve te shquar Eqerem Cabej, Musine Kokalari, dhe Ismail Kadare "Nderi i Qytetit" te vendlindjes. Kadare: "Qyteti i imi dhe i juaji njekohesisht, me dha mua vizionin e pare te botes, me dha perfytyrimin artistik te saj, me mesoi ta shikoj, ta degjoj dhe ta shkruaj rremujen e kesaj bote, pamje te saj, dramen e saj" Gjuhetari i shquar Eqerem Cabej, shkrimtarja e persektuar Musine Kokalari, dhe shkrimtari i madh Ismail Kadare moren vleresimin "Nderi i Qytetit" nga Bashkia e Gjirokastres. Ne nje ceremoni te organizuar me kete rast pasditen e se henes, kryetari i Bashkise se Gjirokastres, lexoi para disa dhjetra te pranishmeve, fjalen pershendetese qe Ismail Kadare i dergonte qytetit te tij. Fjala pershendetese e Kadarese: "Jam shume i prekur dhe shume i nderuar per titullin e larte qe me jep qyteti im i lindjes. Keto jane fjale qe zakonisht thuhen ne raste te tilla, por duhet te me besoni, se ne kete rast une kam ndjesine dhe shijen se po i them per here te pare. Kjo vjen, sepse te gjitha nderimet qe mund te kete nje shkrimtar, nderimi ne vendin e vet, ose ne vende te tjera kane dicka te manget nese mungon ai, nderimi fillestar, mungon vleresimi i qytetit, i vendit ku ai ka pare per here te pare boten me sy. Qyteti i imi dhe i juaji njekohesisht, me dha mua vizionin e pare te botes, me dha perfytyrimin artistik te saj, me mesoi ta shikoj, ta degjoj dhe ta shkruaj rremujen e kesaj bote, pamje te saj, dramen e saj. Per Gjirokastren qytetin tone jane thene shume vleresime, jane thene shume fjale, jane bere shume metafora dhe figura, une do te shtoja dhe nje gje qe me duket se, ose e kam pershtypjen, nuk eshte vene ne dukje: Gjirokastra, si rralle kush qytet ne Ballkan, jo vetem ne Shqiperi por ne tere gadishullin e Ballkanit, ka nxjerre, ka lindur ka prodhuar qytetare, sepse qytetaret jane per fat te keq shume te rralle. Kane qene dhe mbeten ende sot. Historia e Ballkanit, historia qe vazhdon ende sot po e tregon kete gje. Pra, ky qytet i vogel me keto shtepi te medha e te ftohta, vertet i ka dhene botes shqiptare dhe te gjithe botes ballkanase nje sasi te madh qytetaresh, qe rralle qytet ne bote mund ta kete prodhuar, per ato permasa qe ka ai dhe kjo eshte nje gje e mrekullueshme, per nje qytet te prodhoje ate qe e dikton dhe emri i vet, pra, te prodhoje qytetare. Dy nga qytetaret qe marrin bashke me mua sot vleresimin tuaj te larte, gjuhetari i madh Eqerem Cabej dhe shkrimtarja e shquar dhe e persekutuar mizorisht gjate ketij gjysme shekulli Musine Kokalari, dy bashkeqytetaret e mi qe une i njoh dhe i cmoj shume, dua t'u falenderoj edhe njehere te gjithe ata qe moren kete nisme, Bashkine e qytetit, dashamiresit e artit e te kultures te gjithe qytetaret e Gjirokastres qe e mbajne gjalle qytetarine e saj". Ne ceremonine e organizuar ne forme spektakli u recituan poezi te Kadarese, u pershendet nga intelektuale te njohur te qytetit qe kishin mberritur enkas nga kryeqyteti i vendit. Ndricim Nero From pilika at yahoo.com Tue Feb 15 14:08:32 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 11:08:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: The Kokkalis program lecture Message-ID: <20000215190832.2487.qmail@web801.mail.yahoo.com> I invite everybody to go and ask questions related to the human rights of the Albanian illegal immigrants and to the rights of the ethnic minorities, including the Arvanitas. Without any responsible Albanian being there, I guarantee that the gentleman will ramble uncontrolled about how enlightened his state is and about what pains it is going through to civilize its neighbors - all of them. --- Lydia_Spataru/FS/KSG at ksg.harvard.edu wrote: > From: Lydia_Spataru/FS/KSG at ksg.harvard.edu > Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:37:54 -0500 > Subject: The Kokkalis program lecture > > > > > > The Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and > East-Central Europe cordially invites > you to the following lecture: > > > European Enlargement: Its Impact on Central > and South Eastern Europe > > H.E. Loucas Tsilas > Permanent Representative of > Greece > to the European Union > > > Friday, February 18, 2000 > 3:00-4:30 PM. > > Fainsod Room, Litauer > Building > Kennedy School of > Government > 79 JFK St, Cambridge > > > > > For further information > contact > > Kokkalis_Program at ksg.harvard.edu > Or (617) 496-7114 > > > > > > > > > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Tue Feb 15 21:40:39 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 21:40:39 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Albright in Tirana Message-ID: Focus of Trip Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright will travel to Zagreb and Tirana, February 18 and 19, respectively. In Zagreb, the Secretary will lead the U.S. delegation attending the inauguration of Croatian President-Elect Stjepan Mesic. She will again congratulate the Croatian people for choosing the path of economic and political reform necessary to re-integrate Croatia into the rest of Europe. In Tirana, the Secretary will meet with Albanian President Rexhep Meidani and Prime Minister Ilir Meta. She will recognize the crucial role played by the people of Albania during the Kosovo crisis, and emphasize the important part Albania plays in regional stability and prosperity. From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 17 18:33:24 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 15:33:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Mitrovica Message-ID: <20000217233324.27326.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com> The Irish Times February 17, 2000 Pg. 15 Dream of diverse Kosovo fades as Serbs divide town Christian Jennings found deeply entrenched attitudes in the divided Kosovan city of Mitrovica Northern Mitrovica starts just the other side of the last British Warrior armoured vehicle. A crouching English private from the Royal Green Jackets, assault-rifle levelled, gives the obligatory warning. "There's a sniper threat," he says, breath misting through the khaki Arab head-dress, or shemag, he wears wrapped around his nose and mouth. "Beyond this point we can't come and pick you up if you get hit." Once through the barbed-wire on the north end of the bridge over the River Ibar, which separates north and south of this bitterly-divided city, you're in Serb territory. This part of the scruffy city, with its communist-era apartment blocks, may be part of Kosovo, with all of NATO and the UN's over-stretched claims to multi-ethnicity, but this is very much mono-ethnic country. Hard to the left-hand side is the Dolce Vita cafe, a hangout for the Serb paramilitary teams suspected of being the real security in this part of town. The place was closed three days ago, after French NATO troops surrounded it with armoured vehicles and sent in 50 soldiers on an arms raid. But the paramilitaries and their accomplices are still very much in evidence. Just walk up the central shopping street for 300 metres. Go past the UN police vehicle torched during last week's ethnic cleansing of Albanians, past the brightly-painted caravans selling hamburgers, and the drapers' shops with their dusty, faded mannequins decked out in flared suits. And there they are, just past the NATO soldiers. Three body-armoured French infantrymen lounge against a VAB armoured-car at the crossroads. The camouflaged vehicle has the name "Luxembourg 1684" stencilled on its hulking flank, commemorating a former battle honour. This crossroads, like all main arteries in northern Mitrovica, is code-named after a part of Paris. This junction is "Passy". Straight on from here, past "Rue des Rosiers", and there's a khaki Yugoslav army jeep swerveparked into the kerb. Five Serb men are inside, identically dressed in black leather jackets, black roll-necks, black jeans, and radio handsets. These are the local men organised by Oliver Ivanovic, the self-=styled mayor of northern Mitrovica. These are the bridgekeepers, who Bajram Rexhepi, the Albanian mayor of southern Mitrovica, claims led the recent ethnic rampage against Albanians. Eight Albanians were killed and some 1,200 forced to flee their properties in the north. Less than 1,500 Albanians still remain in the north, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. "Oliver Ivanovic keeps us in touch," says Ljumir Marich (23), a refugee from the Krajina region of Croatia, who fled first to Pristina in 1995 and then to Mitrovica last September after NATO entered Kosovo. "This is a small town and we need to know what is going on. There could be another Albanian attack at any time." Ljumir and his 23-year-old Krajina Serb girlfriend, Vanja Majstorevic, are both engineering students. Dressed in black wool and grey velvet, suede shoes brushed, they're off for a walk in the cold, late afternoon light. They've reason to be nervous. On Sunday, French troops fought a five-hour running gun-battle through the streets of northern Mitrovica against Albanian snipers, former Kosovo Liberation Army rebels who had infiltrated the north, barricaded themselves into an apartment, mined the stairs and loaded their Kalashnikovs. Two French soldiers were wounded. Serb gunmen took advantage of the confusion to open fire on British soldiers on the south of the river. British snipers returned fire. But Vanja and Ljumir will only tell you about the Albanian attack. Serbs, they say, were not involved. Only Albanians. They used to live in Pristina, before they fled to the enclave of northern Mitrovica, escaping Albanian reprisals for the Serb ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. They know Albanians. "Tell us," they ask, "in Pristina are children still being killed for their body-parts?" Up at the United Nations Police HQ, all the officers have orders not to talk to the press. These are men who went out on a limb two weeks ago, rescuing Albanians from a rampaging Serb mob, while French NATO soldiers, they claim, stood by and did nothing. Their lips are now sealed from above. One of the recently-destroyed Albanian properties stands around the corner, on the edge of the Mahala quarter, now guarded by French troops busily arresting Albanians suspected of being snipers. They've pulled in over 50 so far. And only one Serb. "I'm sick of being accused of having a pro-Serb agenda," says French General Pierre de Saqui de Sannes wearily. "I'm committed to a multi-ethnic Mitrovica." Not so, say his critics. Oliver Ivanovic's men are excused the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, while Albanians in the south of Mitrovica stay indoors. French troops will open fire to protect their own lives, but not those of Albanians. "It's just the beginning of the end of any hope for a multi-ethnic Kosovo," says a senior NATO official. "It appears that deals are being done to keep the north of this city purely Serb, just for the sake of keeping the peace. Milosevic is triumphing again." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From mehollim at hotmail.com Sun Feb 20 14:19:26 2000 From: mehollim at hotmail.com (Mimoza Meholli) Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 11:19:26 PST Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Canada's Ambassador Bissett's speech on the Serbia-Kosova war Message-ID: <20000220191926.66360.qmail@hotmail.com> >Dear Friends, >Hope you will find the following speech by Ambassador Bissett helpful as an >alternative voice in understanding the war in Yugoslavia/Kosova. Thanks for >your continued work on behalf of peaceful relations and relationships in >and with Kosova and Yugoslavia. >Peace, >David > > > >* * * > > >Subject: A must read! Ambassador Bisset's address to SCFAIT >today! > >NOTES FOR ADDRESS TO STANDING COMMITTEE >FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE (in Canada) > >1: introduction > >I wish to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity of >speaking this morning. > >It is some comfort to know that although I was not allowed to >speak to anyone in the Canadian embassy in Belgrade during a >recent visit there that I am free to speak to members of the >Canadian parliament. > >I have been an out spoken critic of the NATO bombing of >Yugoslavia. I believe it to have been a tragic mistake--- a historic >miscalculation that will have far reaching implications. > >When NATO bombs fell on Yugoslavia in the spring and summer >of last year they caused more than just death and destruction in >that country. The bombs also struck at the heart of international >law and delivered a serious blow to the framework of global >security that since the end of the second world war has protected >all of us from the horrors of a nuclear war. > >Kosovo broke the ground rules for NATO engagement and the >aggressive military intervention by NATO into the affairs of a >sovereign state for other than defensive purposes marked an >ominous turning point in the aims and objectives of that >organization. It is important that we understand this and seek >clarification as to whether this was a "one-off" aberration or a >signal of fundamental change in the nature and purposes of the >organization.this is something the committee might well examine >in the course of its work. > >2: an illegal war > >NATO's war in Kosovo was conducted without the approval of the >United Nations security council. It was a violation of international >law, the United Nations charter and its own article 1, which >requires NATO to settle any international disputes by peaceful >means and not to threaten or use force, "in any manner >inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." > >Apologists for NATO including our own foreign and defence >ministers try to avoid this issue by simply not mentioning it. There >has been no attempt to explain why the United Nations security >council was ignored. No effort to spell out under whose authority >did NATO bomb Yugoslavia. The ministers and their officials >continue to justify the air strikes on the grounds that the bombs >were necessary to stop ethnic cleansing and atrocities, despite all >the evidence that by far the bulk of the ethnic cleansing took place >after the bombing not before it. It was the bombing that triggered >off the worst of the ethnic cleansing. > >As for the atrocities it now seems that here again we were lied to >about the extent of the crimes committed. United states secretary >of defence Cohen told us that at least 100,000 Kosovars had >perished. Tony Blair spoke of genocide being carried out in >Kosovo. The media relished in these atrocity stories and printed > >every story told to them by Albanian, "eye witnesses." The myth >that the war was to stop ethnic cleansing and atrocities continue to >be perpetrated by department spokesmen and large parts of the >media. > >No one wants to defend atrocities and the numbers game in such >circumstances becomes sordid. Nevertheless numbers do become >important if they are used to justify military action against a >sovereign state. In the case of Kosovo it appears that about 2000 >people were killed there prior to the NATO bombing. Considering >that a civil war had been underway since 1993 this is not a >remarkable figure and compared with a great many other hot spots >hardly enough to warrant a 79-day bombing campaign. It is also >interesting to note that the un tribunal indictment of Milosovic of >May 1999, cites only one incident of deaths before the bombing >the infamous Racak incident, which itself is challenged by French >journalists who were on the ground there and suspect a frame-up >involving General Walker who sounded the alarm. > >The Kosovo "war" reveals disturbing evidence of how lies and >duplicity can mislead us into accepting things that we instinctively >know to be wrong. Jamie Shea and other NATO apologists have >lied to us about the bombing. The sad thing is that most of the >Canadian media, and our political representatives have accepted >without question what has been told to us by NATO and our own >foreign affairs spokesmen. > >3: an unnecessary war > >Perhaps the most serious charge against the NATO bombing of >Yugoslavia is that it was unnecessary. NATO chose bombing over >diplomacy, violence over negotiation. NATO's leaders tried to >convince us that dropping tons of bombs on Yugoslavia was >serving humanitarian purposes > >A UN Security Council resolution of October 1998 accepted by >Yugoslavia, authorized over 1300 monitors from the organization >for security and cooperation in Europe [OSCE] to enter Kosovo >and try to de-escalate the fighting. From the accounts of a number >of these monitors their task was successful. While cease-fire >violations continued on both sides the intensity of the armed >struggle was considerably abated. > >The former Czech foreign minister, Jiri Dienstbier, and Canada's >own Rollie Keith of Vancouver -- both monitors for the OSCE on >the ground in Kosovo -- have publicly stated that there were no >international refugees over the last five months of the OSCE's >presence in Kosovo and the number of internally displaced only >amounted to a few thousands in the weeks leading up to the >bombing. > >The OSCE mission demonstrated that diplomacy and negotiation >might well have resolved the Kosovo problem without resorting to >the use of force. It was the failure of the United states to accept >any flexibility in its dealing with Belgrade in the weeks leading up >to the war that spelled diplomatic failure. > >The adamant refusal of the USA to involve either the Russians or >the United Nations in the negotiations. The refusal to allow any >other intermediary to deal with Milosovic and finally the >imposition of the Rambouillet ultimatum which was clearly >designed to ensure that Yugoslavia had no choice but to refuse its > >insulting terms. > >It is now generally accepted by those who have seen the >Rambouillet Agreement that no sovereign state could have agreed >to its conditions. The insistence of allowing access to all of >Yugoslavia by NATO forces and the demand that a referendum on >autonomy be held within three years guaranteed a Serbian >rejection. > >The Serbian Parliament did, however, on March 23, state a >willingness to "examine the character and extent of an >international presence in Kosovo immediately after the signing of >an autonomy accord acceptable to all national communities in >Kosovo, the local Serb minority included." The United States was >not interested in pursuing this offer. NATO needed its war. >NATO's formal commitment to resolve international disputes by >peaceful means was thrown out the window. > >The Rambouillet document itself was not easily obtained from >NATO sources. The chairman of the defence committee of the >French National Assembly asked for a copy shortly after the >bombing commenced but was not given a copy until a few days >before the UN peace treaty was signed. I hope that members of >this committee have a copy to look at and will be able to find out >when and if Canada was informed of its conditions. > >4: NATO's campaign a total failure > >We have been asked to believe that the war in Kosovo was fought >for human rights. Indeed the president of the Czech Republic >received a standing ovation in this House of Commons when he >stated that Kosovo was the first war fought for human values >rather than territory. I suspect even President Havel would have >second thoughts about that statement now that a large part of >Yugoslav territory has in effect been handed over to the >Albanians. > >The war allegedly to stop ethnic cleansing has not done so. Serbs, >Gypsies, Jews, and Slav Muslims are being forced out of Kosovo >under the eyes of 45,000 NATO troops. Murder and anarchy >reigns supreme in Kosovo as the KLA and criminal elements have >taken charge. The United Nations admits failure to control the >situation and warns Serbs not to return. > >The war allegedly to restore stability to the Balkans has done the >opposite. Yugoslavia's neighbors are in a state of turmoil. >Montenegro is on the edge of civil war. Macedonia is now worried >that Kosovo has shown the way for its own sizeable Albanian >minority to demand self-determination. Albania has been >encouraged to strive harder to fulfill its dream of greater Albania. >Serbia itself has been ruined economically -- embittered and >disillusioned, it feels betrayed and alienated from the western >democracies. > >The illegal and unnecessary war has alienated the other great >nuclear powers, Russia and China. These countries are now >convinced that the west cannot be trusted. NATO expansion >eastward is seen as an aggressive and hostile threat and will be >answered by an increase in the nuclear arsenal of both nations. >After Kosovo who can with any conviction convince them that >NATO is purely a defensive alliance dedicated to peace and to >upholding the principles of the United Nations? > >More seriously the NATO bombing has destroyed NATO's >credibility. NATO stood for more than just a powerful military > >organization. It stood for peace; the rule of law, and democratic >institutions. The bombing of Yugoslavia threw all of that out the >window. > >No longer can NATO stand on the moral high ground. Its action in >Yugoslavia revealed it to be an aggressive military machine >prepared to ignore international law and intervene with deadly >force in the internal affairs of any state with whose actions or >behaviour it does not agree. > >5:conclusions > >There are those who believe that the long-standing principle of >state sovereignty can be over ruled when human rights violations >are taking place in a country. Until Kosovo the ground rules for >such intervention called for security council authority before such >action could be taken. Apologists for NATO argue that it was >unlikely security council authority could have been obtained >because of the veto power of China or Russia. So it would appear >rather than even try to get consent NATO took upon itself the >powers of the security council. I am not sure we should all be >comfortable with this development. > >undoubtedly there may be times when such intervention is >justified and immediately Rwanda comes to mind, but >intervention for humanitarian reasons is a dangerous concept. >Who is to decide when to take such action and under whose >authority? Hitler intervened in Czechoslovakia because he claimed >the human rights of the Sudeten Germans were being violated. >Those who advocate a change in the current rules for intervention >are free to do so but until the rules change should we not all obey >the ones that still have legitimacy? > >NATO made a serious mistake in Kosovo. Its bombing campaign >was not only an unmitigated disaster but it changed fundamentally >the very nature and purposes of the alliance. Does article 1 of the >NATO treaty still stand? Does NATO still undertake to settle any >international disputes in which it may become involved by >peaceful means? Do the NATO countries still undertake to refrain >in their international relations from the threat or use of force in >any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations? > >Kosovo should serve as a warning call that Canadian democracy >needs a shot in the arm to wake it up to the realities that foreign >policy is important-important because as happened one day last >march Canadians can wake up and find they are at war. Canadian >pilots were bombing Serbia. Yet there was no declaration of war. >The Canadian parliament was not consulted. The majority of the >Canadian people had no idea where Kosovo was -let alone >understand why our aircraft were bombing cities in a fellow nation >state that had been a staunch ally during two world wars. > >It was not only Yugoslav sovereignty that was violated by >NATO's illegal action. Canadian sovereignty was also abused. >Canada had become involved in a war without any member of the >Canadian parliament or the Canadian people being consulted.the >ultimate expression of a nation's sovereignty is the right to declare >war. NATO abrogated this right. > >If it essential that we give up some of our sovereignty as the price >we pay for membership in global institutions such as NATO then > >it is mandatory that such institutions follow their own rules, >respect the rule of law, and operate within the generally accepted >framework of the United Nations Charter. This NATO did not do. >It is for this reason I would suggest your committee must ask >some tough questions about the nature of Canada's involvement in >the Kosovo war. > >James Bissett > >PEACEWORKERS >721 Shrader St. >San Francisco, CA 94117 USA >Phone and fax 415-751-0302 >email PEACEWORKERS at igc.apc.org >********************************************* >Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the >world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has...Margaret Mead >********************************************** ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 8880 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pilika at yahoo.com Tue Feb 22 12:31:48 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 09:31:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: [Prishtina-l] Special on KOSOVA Tonight at 10PM EST in the USA Message-ID: <20000222173148.22944.qmail@web803.mail.yahoo.com> --- LINESMAN at webtv.net wrote: > From: LINESMAN at webtv.net > Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:08:50 -0500 (EST) > To: prishtina-l at alb-net.com > Subject: [Prishtina-l] Special on KOSOVA Tonight at > 10PM EST in the USA > Reply-to: prishtina-l at alb-net.com > > --- Prishtina-L Discussion Forum --- > Archives: > www.alb-net.com/pipermail/prishtina-l > > There is a two part special on Kosova tonight > Tuesday February 22/00 at > 10PM eastern standard time on your local PBS channel > here in the USA. > This is part 1 of 2 and is called Frontline "War in > Europe" > Pass on the information to interested parties. > > Me Respect > > AB > > > _____________________________________________________ > Prishtina-L discussion forum: > Prishtina-L at alb-net.com > http://www.alb-net.com/mailman/listinfo/prishtina-l > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From smastrit at bu.edu Wed Feb 23 00:55:06 2000 From: smastrit at bu.edu (Sorkadh Mustafa) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 00:55:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Friends of Bosnia medical aid drive for Gllogovc/Glogovac hospital Message-ID: Friends of Bosnia is organizing a medical aid drive for the health center/hospital in Gllogovc, 10 miles west of Prishtina. Here's a web page with more details: http://www.crocker.com/~fob/recon1.htm. This is the sixth aid drive organized by Friends of Bosnia. Sponsoring the effort are Physicians for Human Rights and the International Institute of Boston. You will have the opportunity to meet Glenn Ruga, who is president of Friends of Bosnia, when he comes to show slides of his recent trip to Kosovar kids kids. One of the houses in his pictures, was the house that belonged to the grand-parents of one of the children in the Saturday Program. I will keep you posted about the date of his visit. sorkadh From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Wed Feb 23 18:24:22 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 18:24:22 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Albanian Institute Message-ID: --- Artan AGOLLI wrote: > Greetings to all, > > The Albanian Institute, an independent pro-democracy > and free market > institution recently established in Albania is > launching a campaign under > its leadership project to create a database of all > Albanian human > resources in Albania and abroad who are highly > educated or successful in > their carees internationally. > > > The main objective is to identify Albanians or > others who are interested > in development of democracy and free markets in > Albania and have the > leadership capacity and capability to participate > and contribute in this > cause. > > > The purpose of this campaign is to create a > reinassance movement that > will contribute in taking Albania out of the current > critical situation > and contribute in making it a better democratic and > prosperous country. > > > I would appreciate it if anyone of you could > contribute with names and > contacts of > > these individuals including yourselves. You could > contact us via e-mail > or tel/fax:355-42-57235. > > > Please find attached some general information about > the Albanian > Institute's programs and philosophy. > > > Sincerely yours, > > > art agolli > > President and Founder > > The Albanian Institute > > > > > > > The Albanian Institute (AI) > > for democracy and free markets > > > > > AI Goals and Objectives > > > The Albanian Institute (AI), was established in 1999 > to promote > democratic institutions and free markets in Albania. > AI?s main goal is > to become the most respectable and independent > pro-democracy and free > markets civil society institution in Albania. > The institute?s main > focus is the development of democratic, free market > oriented and > principled leadership and public policies in all > sectors of Albanian > society. AI's objective is to provide a wide range > of educational, > research and publication programs that promote the > development of such > leadership and as result democracy and free markets > in Albania. > > > > AI Strategy > > > The institute?s strategy is to promote democracy and > free markets in > Albania by investing in the development of > leadership skills and > principled leaders in all sectors of Albanian > society. In addition to > leadership development and in order to affect the > existing system the > institute will establish a structure of policy > change by investing in > ideas and human resources. This structure will be > carried out in three > stages: In the first stage, AI will engage in > developing a conceptual > framework of ideas that promote the establishment of > democratic > institutions and free markets through educational > programs and research. > The second stage consists of taking these ideas a > step further by > developing ideas into policy analysis. This will be > achieved through > development of policy analysis that provide concrete > solutions of public > issues and on democracy making and free markets. > Finally, the third > stage consists of implementation and advocacy of the > ideas and policy > analysis. These will be advocated to decision > makers in the three > branches of government and especially the public at > large through its > publications and advocacy programs. > > > AI is a non-partisan and non-profit organisation. > The institute is > politically and economically independent from both > government and special > interest groups. This principle is vital to AI?s > legitimacy and > effectiveness. AI does not engage in political > campaigns or > affiliations. The same principle applies to our > funding. We welcome > donations from individuals, corporations and other > sources only if they > coincide with the principles and philosophy of the > institute. We do not > spread ourselves thin or deviate from the principles > of the institute for > funding. > > > > AI Programs > 20 > > The Leadership Project > > > The Leadership Project is a plan to develop a > private program of > leadership in Albania that will provide short, > medium and long term > training in pro-democracy and free market leadership > development. > > > > > The project's goal is to become a fountain of ideas > on democracy and free > markets and contribute to the creation of a new > generation of leaders and > thinkers with a democratic and free market mentality > in all sectors of > Albanian society. In more specific the project > hopes to contribute to > stopping of the brain drainage from Albania and > providing an intellectual > infrastructure for all those that want to contribute > to the strengthening > of democracy and free markets in Albania. The > project hopes to become a > catalyst in the beginning of a new renaissance in > Albania. > > > > The Public Policy Program > > > The Public Policy Program consists of studies and > research that provide > democratic and free market solutions to public > policy issues. The second > component of the program is advocacy of these > solutions to the > legislative and executive branches of the government > and the public. The > program will concentrate on all the main sectors of > Albanian society such > as banking and monetary reforms, budgetary reform, > privatisation, civil > service reform, deregulation, foreign policy, > environment, health, > education and others. > > === message truncated === From kruja at fas.harvard.edu Wed Feb 23 16:30:04 2000 From: kruja at fas.harvard.edu (Eriola Kruja) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:30:04 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] ALBSA Comments Form (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 17:58:00 -0500 (EST) From: TBP62 at aol.com To: webmaster at albstudent.org Subject: ALBSA Comments Form I had the priviledge this past summer to spend time with several people from my church helping to dismantle a refugee tent camp in Ereske, Albania, repackage bunk beds provided by the British Army to be taken into Kosova for those who had lost their homes. I have an opportunity to go back again this summer and take my 15 year old son to work on a building project. Although I was able to learn a few Albanian phrases, I would really like to study the language and be able to better converse with those I will meet. I live just outside NYC. If you are aware of any classroom environment in which I can study and learn the language I would be most appreciative. Thank you From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 19:14:18 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:14:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Daily Telegraph Editorial Message-ID: <20000224001418.3423.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) February 23, 2000, Wednesday Pg. 29 Leading Article: By the waters of Mitrovica THE attempt by Kfor, the Nato-led force in Kosovo, to desegregate the northern town of Mitrovica is long overdue. The goal of allied intervention in the province was to establish a polity where neither Kosovar nor Serb suffered ethnic discrimination. That this has proved so elusive was no excuse for allowing Mitrovica to become divided between the two communities at the Ibar river. There was always a danger that the Serbs would try to achieve a de facto partition of Kosovo by cleansing northern Mitrovica of Kosovars, and maintaining their stranglehold on its hinterland, which includes the mine complex of Trepca. Earlier this month, at least 1,000 ethnic Albanians were driven out of the town; those who remain north of the Ibar are guarded by Kfor. The expulsions are a direct challenge to the authority of that force and the UN civilian mission in the province. And there is no doubt that behind them lies the hand of Slobodan Milosevic, against whom the alliance has twice gone to war, in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo, to thwart ethnic cleansing. In a politically explosive situation, the house-to-house search for weapons in both parts of Mitrovica is a very unpleasant task. Our sympathies are with the Kfor soldiers who have been carrying it out; those from the Royal Green Jackets will at least have had the experience of similar operations in Northern Ireland. But the search must now be resumed, despite the threat of renewed violence. The unauthorised holding of weapons cannot be tolerated. It is the role of Kfor and the international police force in the province, not paramilitary groups from the two communities, to protect those Kosovars and Serbs who feel threatened. Allied acquiescence in the division of Mitrovica has been shameful; for that, the French, who are in charge of northern Kosovo, bear special responsibility. The pattern of outside involvement in the Balkans over the past nine years has been of alternating procrastination and decisiveness. With Kosovo, the West hesitated about military intervention, then launched its air campaign against Yugoslavia and deployed troops in the province, then allowed Mitrovica, like Mostar in Bosnia before it, to be divided into ethnic ghettos. The Kosovar town is the latest test of allied resolve. Freedom of movement across the Ibar must be restored and Belgrade's plan to retain a foothold in the province thwarted. With reports that Serbian troops are concentrating on the northern border, it is now time for a show of Western determination, both in opening the bridges across the Ibar and in supplying Kosovo with the policemen and funds necessary to restore law and order and rebuild what Milosevic's henchman destroyed. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 19:27:49 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:27:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] London Times editorial Message-ID: <20000224002749.5743.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> The Times (London) February 23, 2000, Wednesday Losing the peace The intense clashes between British troops and Kosovo Albanians in Mitrovica might have been prompted by the explosive circumstances of this divided city. They are also a reflection of the wider difficulties that the international community has faced as it attempts to restore order within Kosovo. The ethnic violence demonstrated in Mitrovica is unusual, if only because Serbs and Albanians in the rest of Kosovo have so separated themselves from each other that direct conflict is impractical. But the drift towards anarchy seems relentless. The prospect of a smooth transition to civilian control, scheduled to start by the end of this year, now appears unrealistic. The task of promoting civil peace within Kosovo never promised to be comfortable. The legacy of discrimination practised in the province by Slobodan Milosevic over a decade, the impact of the war itself and the mass expulsion of Kosovo Albanians, the continuing destabilisation orchestrated by Mr Milosevic within Kosovo and Montenegro, and the fact that Serbia sits at the centre of those economic networks and transport routes essential to recovery, will continue to impede reconstruction. The minimal progress made in Kosovo over the last nine months is still very disappointing. The elementary institutions essential for a civil society to function coherently - an agreed legal code, established property rights, reliable tax revenues, a functioning banking system and at least an embryonic political process free from physical intimidation - remain absent or inadequate. The most potent symbol of this disorder has been the directorate established to arbitrate in the numerous property disputes across Kosovo. It could not start work as planned because of a dispute over who owned the buildings from which it was to operate. The absence of any consensus over the authority of Yugoslav legislation within Kosovo, the uncertain procedures for trials, the refusal of local police officers to arrest, or judges to impose sentences on, all those with whom they sympathise has inspired an orgy of lawlessness. The overwhelming majority of criminal suspects are released shortly after their arrest and then disappear. The international police force is still, as Bernard Kouchner, the UN Special Representative for Kosovo contends, understaffed and overstretched. It has not received the promised reinforcements. This has obliged Nato peacekeeping forces, with varying degrees of commitment and competence, to assume a policing role which was never intended. This is not purely a problem of unruly elements and insufficient resources. The bureaucratic in-fighting between the numerous international institutions - UN, Nato, EU and the OSCE - that possess a presence of sorts in Kosovo has compounded matters. M Kouchner was appointed to his post at the behest of France for reasons of "political balance" rather than regional expertise or technical competence. He has proved an inefficient administrator with an unhelpful enthusiasm for personal publicity. The UN now needs to reconsider every aspect of its work in Kosovo. If it does not, then it will find itself present on the ground for decades but to little beneficial effect. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 19:31:43 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:31:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] J'accuse for Mitrovica Message-ID: <20000224003143.6375.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> The Toronto Star February 23, 2000, MITROVICA FLASHPOINT FOR THE NEXT BALKAN WAR Susan Blaustein The divided northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica has long been regarded as the flashpoint most likely to sink the international peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Yet, Kosovo's top international officials have allowed the long- smoldering violence there to explode, underscoring again how their failure of will promotes the agenda of indicted war criminal and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Mitrovica is not just another Balkan cauldron of centuries-old hatreds. The city is a lynchpin in Belgrade's ''Greater Serbia'' strategy of expelling non- Serbs from the region. Milosevic has never had more than a propaganda interest in northern Kosovo's historically significant monasteries. But he does have a keen financial interest in the Trepca complex of mines and downstream processing facilities, including a smelter in Zvecan, which is widely believed to have served the regime as an efficient money-laundering mechanism. Since the deployment of NATO's Kosovo Force, or KFOR, Trepca's Serb directors, who report to Milosevic, have continued to operate the smelter to process ores trucked in by foreign companies still doing business with the regime. Mitrovica is Milosevic's only remaining foothold in Kosovo and it is there he has decided to call the bluff of the international community, in flagrant violation of the peace accord. With the apparent acquiescence of the French KFOR command, which has been loath to risk casualties, and the local U.N. administrators, Milosevic continues to send Serbian police and paramilitary forces across the Serbia-Kosovo border and into the Mitrovica area. These operatives monitor, harass, terrorize and expel ethnic Albanian civilians who dare to live in or travel to the Serb side of town, where the hospital and university are located. For months, French commanders have denied there were Serbian police or paramilitary troops in the area, despite reliable reports to the contrary. After last week's wounding of two French soldiers, the death of an ethnic Albanian shot by the French and ethnic Albanian outrage at what they perceive as blatant French partisanship, the French troops were replaced by British troops. German, Dutch and Italian reinforcements were sent in, too, and, on Thursday, the first of 300 U.N. international police were deployed to Mitrovica. But the French remain in overall command and from all appearances, German KFOR Gen. Klaus Reinhardt continues to accept their assessments of the situation. More worrisome, Reinhardt and an increasing number of frustrated international officials are abandoning the U.N.'s stated commitment to create and protect a multi-ethnic society in Kosovo. Instead, they favour something closer to their French colleagues' view that mixing the two populations is impossible, and all that can be done is to keep the two from killing each other. This passive style of peacekeeping has emboldened Milosevic to press his hand further in Mitrovica, by attempting to keep control of Trepca and by spurring the harassment and expulsions of ethnic Albanians from the Serb side of town. They have responded aggressively with sniper attacks, marauding incursions into southern Serbia and, allegedly, the fatal ambush of a KFOR-escorted U.N. bus carrying Serbs too afraid to travel on their own. The next night in Mitrovica, a riot left seven ethnic Albanians dead and 34 wounded, among them five peacekeepers. Ten days later, two more French peacekeepers were wounded, as ethnic Albanian gunmen reportedly fired on Serbs who had set houses on fire. The French fired back, killing an '' Albanian sniper'' whom human-rights monitors and journalists insist was unarmed. The French wounded four other alleged snipers and arrested 46 people, 45 of them ethnic Albanians. If the initial attack on the U.N. bus was, in fact, carried out by ethnic Albanian extremists, that incident was not unprovoked. The international community's continued willingness to turn a blind eye to the Serbs' oppression of ethnic Albanians simply trying to live or work in northern Mitrovica has made the ethnic Albanians impatient not only with their foreign protectors but also with their moderate leaders. They are left with no choice but to turn to Albanian extremists for help. Former Kosovo Liberation Army officers recently began informal recruiting in Pristina. On Wednesday, Kosovar political leader and former KLA commander Hashim Thaci warned the international community that Mitrovica's violence ''could spread to other parts of Kosovo.'' The standoff in Mitrovica must be brought to an end, with the help of a resolute and robust KFOR presence, international mediation and, perhaps, as is being contemplated at U.N. headquarters, a carefully chosen international administration for the city. All Serb police and paramilitary units should be arrested and tried, or thrown out of Kosovo, all gun-wielding ethnic Albanians and Kosovar Serbs disarmed and detained. Without such an immediate display of backbone on the part of both those international officials posted in Mitrovica and those leading the Kosovo mission, the international community will have failed Milosevic's latest test of its resolve and will bear at least partial responsibility for his next Balkan war. Susan Blaustein, a journalist and senior consultant with the International Crisis Group, recently spent time in Mitrovica. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 18:57:52 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 15:57:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Mitrovica Message-ID: <20000223235752.24447.qmail@web119.yahoomail.com> February 23, 2000; Wednesday 3:29 PM, NATO: Serbia Orchestrating Violence JEFFREY ULBRICH BRUSSELS, Belgium Intelligence reports have reinforced NATO's belief that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government is behind the rising violence in a divided city in northern Kosovo. NATO also says it has detected radio contacts between police units in Serbia and Serbs in the city of Kosovska Mitrovica. In Southern Serbia, meanwhile, ethnic Albanian guerrillas are believed to have conducted small-scale infiltration of the Presevo Valley, an ethnic Albanian enclave where Serbian special police are said to have begun an aggressive crackdown. The Yugoslav army, for its part, has begun new training, and NATO intelligence has observed a great deal of military movement in the Kosovo border area. For the moment, the activity appears to be routine training, NATO officials say, but they suggest it doesn't take much to transform training into something more aggressive. The rising tensions in Mitrovica over the past three weeks, as well as these other reports in and around the province, prompted the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body, to call a special meeting for Friday to discuss Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia from which Yugoslav forces were pushed by a NATO bombing campaign last spring. NATO and the United States have accused Milosevic's government of being behind the nearly three weeks of violence in Kosovska Mitrovica, which has the largest remaining Serb enclave in Kosovo. On Wednesday, a senior Yugoslav commander, Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, called the allegation ''nonsense'' aimed at diverting attention from NATO's failure to bring peace to the province. But the 19-nation defense alliance expects Milosevic to begin stirring up trouble in Kosovo, a NATO official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official said NATO intelligence is keeping track of the disposition of the various forces, cross-border movements and insuring that new weapons don't replace the guns being seized by the peacekeepers. Intelligence officials believe that Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic, Milosevic's right-hand man for Kosovo affairs who is under indictment by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for alleged atrocities, is personally running the stepped-up Yugoslav campaign. There are 30,000 NATO troops and 7,000 soldiers from non-NATO countries now attempting to keep the peace in Kosovo. Others are stationed in neighboring Macedonia. Concerned the unrest could expand to areas outside Kosovo, Macedonia has put part of its armed forces stationed near the joint Kosovo-Serbia border on a higher alert because of violence and tension in Kosovo, army spokesman Gjorgji Trendafilov said Wednesday. ''The soldiers and officer of this part of the army have intensified their guard and monitoring,'' Trendafilov said. Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander in Europe, and NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson have made it clear they believe the Yugoslav leader is behind the current tensions in Kosovo. Both pledge to get tough on any party, Serb or ethnic Albanian, that attempts to stir unrest. The large Serbian population of Mitrovica, located near the border with Serbia, makes it a flashpoint for violence and a likely place to infiltrate agents from the north, NATO officials say. American, British and Canadian troops have been dispatched to the city to help the French, who have been under increasing pressure. In the Presevo Valley, just east of the Kosovo border and home to as many as 80,000 ethnic Albanians, Belgrade is believed to have moved in more than 200 additional paramilitary police. The police allegedly have begun house-to-house searches, mine-laying and beatings. Though the ethnic Albanians' rebel force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, has been officially disbanded, NATO says small military units continue to operate. The presidency of the European Union, meanwhile, issued a statement Wednesday urging political leaders in Kosovo to exert their influence to stop the violence and ''to play a restraining role in order to avoid the spread of disorder.'' __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 19:01:33 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:01:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Albanian students compete as Business Managers Message-ID: <20000224000133.25607.qmail@web119.yahoomail.com> Business Wire February 23, 2000, Wednesday 12:06 PM Students From 56 Countries to Compete as Business Managers COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Feb. 23, 2000 A record 874 teams of high school and college students from six continents and 56 nations across all 24 time zones are squaring off to see who are the world's best business managers. It's all part of the Hewlett-Packard Global Business Challenge (HPGBC), a Junior Achievement International web-based contest in which students compete against each other in running a computer-simulated business. Students compete for cash and travel prizes totaling over$40,000. How it Works Junior Achievement students from around the world divide into teams and become managers of computer-simulated businesses. The students make decisions about production, price, marketing, research and development, and capital expenses for the businesses. Decisions are then sent via the web to a processing center where they're tabulated. The teams whose decisions produced the most retained earnings advance to the next round. The competition continues from February to June until eight teams remain. Two delegates from those teams will go to Palo Alto, Calif., to compete in a championship round in August. The winner team gets$3,000. Last year, teams from Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Japan, Lithuania and Mexico competed in Brussels, Belgium, in the final round. The team from Belarus won. This year, organizers created a new category for contestants called CYBER teams. Typically a team is formed of students from the same school, but a CYBER team has four students, each from a different country. The students communicate via a chat room to discuss and make their decisions. "CYBER teams add another dimension to a program that's already rich with international interaction," said Sam Taylor, chief operating officer of JAI. "Use of technology is helping expand learning opportunities, bringing the world into the classroom." Lee Ting, vice president and managing director of geographic operations for the Hewlett-Packard Company, has been involved with the contest for five years and he believes it benefits the students in many ways. "The competition helps to open their eyes to all the diversity that exists around the world, making them better global citizens in the future," said Ting. "Students also benefit by gaining a good understanding of how companies function in a real-world market economy and how to work as a team in terms of interpersonal relationships and decision making." "It's not just about economics, it's about understanding international cultures," said Charlotte Sonn, a senior from Auburn, Ala. "This is not only a contest, it's a way of communicating with students from all over the world," said Maxim Derniatin, a student in Russia. "The competition makes learning very keen and exciting." "My students are thrilled about this simulation," said Chuck Autrey, a teacher at the Career Development Center in Longmont, Colo., USA, who has three teams of students competing. "The one real problem I have is limiting the amount of time they spend on it. The students would spend all day in class every day if I would let them." Autrey said he believes the practical nature of the competition is key. "We can lecture until we're blue in the face and we still wonder if the student is understanding. This simulation gives them the opportunity to see first hand the direct relationship that decisions have on the outcomes," said Autrey. "Students are able to put into practice the concepts they are learning in the classroom and that's important." Countries from Albania to Zimbabwe are participating. Here is a complete list: Albania Germany Poland Argentina Guatemala Romania Armenia Honduras Russia Azerbaijan Hungary Singapore Belarus Indonesia Slovakia Belgium Ireland Spain Botswana Israel Sri Lanka Brazil Italy Switzerland Bulgaria Japan Taiwan Canada Kazakhstan Thailand Chile Kenya Trinidad and Tobago China Latvia Turkey Colombia Lithuania Ukraine Costa Rica Macedonia United Kingdom Czech Republic Mexico United States Estonia Moldova Uruguay Fiji Mongolia Zimbabwe France Norway Georgia Paraguay Peru You can view teams and more information at www.jaintl.com/hpgbc. Click on "Team Information" and search by country. Junior Achievement International (www.jaintl.com) is responsible for developing and serving JA programs in 106 countries outside the United States and reaches over 1.5 million primary, secondary and university students each year. CONTACT: Junior Achievement International Sam Taylor, 719/540-0200 sam at jaintl.com URL: http://www.businesswire.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 18:59:37 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 15:59:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Nobel Peace Prize Message-ID: <20000223235937.24709.qmail@web119.yahoomail.com> February 23, 2000; Wednesday 1:52 PM, 150 Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize OSLO, Norway The Nobel Peace Prize committee picked a new leader and began trimming a record 150-name nomination list at its first meeting of the year on Wednesday. President Clinton, a small Albanian town and American peace envoy George Mitchell, as well as groups like the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, were among the candidates. Geir Lundestad, the committee's nonvoting secretary, said 36 groups and 114 individuals were nominated, but the lists are always cut to 20 or 30 at the first meeting of the year. He said the winner will most likely be announced on Oct. 13. The secretive five-member committee never releases or confirms the names of nominees, although those making nominations often announce them. The number rose to 150 from the 144 announced on Feb. 11 because more valid nominations postmarked by the Feb. 1 deadline arrived and the committee added their own nominations. ''There is nothing dramatic about committee members proposing candidates. They add people to the list, but that does not mean they feel bound to support them,'' Lundestad told The Associated Press. Committee members are appointed by, but do not answer to Norway's parliament. Clinton was nominated by two Norwegian legislators for helping secure world peace. Mitchell, a U.S. senator, was nominated for trying to broker peace in Northern Ireland. Other nominees include Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for their Balkan peace efforts; the Salvation Army; and the Albanian town of Kukes for sheltering thousands of refugees during the Kosovo crisis. The Nobel Prizes are always presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of the death of their creator, Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist. The peace prize is awarded in Oslo and the other Nobel prizes in Stockholm, Sweden. The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders won last year's prize. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Wed Feb 23 19:23:15 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:23:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Artemije in US Message-ID: <20000224002315.5002.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> Pittsburgh Post-Gazette February 23, 2000, Wednesday WORLD, Pg. A-4 SERBIAN BISHOP CONDEMNS NATO TROOPS IN KOSOVO ANN RODGERS-MELNICK, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER The Serbian Orthodox bishop of Kosovo told the Orthodox faithful in Aliquippa last night that the NATO peace-keeping mission has been a disaster for Kosovo's Serbian minority, as NATO troops turn a blind eye to violence against Serbs. "There is no doubt that Albanian terrorists used the coming of NATO forces as a unique point in history to come in and cleanse Kosovo of the Serbians who live there," Bishop Artemije of Raska and Prizren told hundreds of people in the hall of St. Elijah Serbian Orthodox Church. "These people who were able to withstand 500 years of Turkish occupation have not been able to withstand five months of peaceful NATO occupation." Artemije's words carry enormous weight because of his track record of defending the rights of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian Muslims against Serbian nationalist aggression. Since 800,000 ethnic Albanians returned from exile, he said, 250,000 Serbs have been forced from their homes along with 50,000 Gypsies, Croats, Turks and Slavic Muslims. More than 500 Serbs have been killed and at least that many are missing. At the same time, he said, Albanians have burned and destroyed 90 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries. He showed a videotape of the monasteries, many of which date from the Middle Ages and could rival any of Europe's great cathedrals for their beauty. Artemije is on a monthlong tour of the United States to protest what he calls onesided enforcement of the peace accords. But he is also highly critical of the Serbian regime of President Slobodan Milosevic. "It is absolutely necessary that the Serbian people go down the road of democracy, spiritual renewal and repentance," he said. Artemije, 65, is one of the few heroes to emerge from the savage ethnic warfare in Kosovo. An advocate of democratic reform, he has long castigated the Serbian government of Milosevic for nationalist aggression. Before and during the conflict of 1999, he denounced atrocities against ethnic Albanians. At the same time, he warned President Clinton that bombing Yugoslavia would only harm more innocent civilians. At the height of the ethnic violence by Serbs against Albanians, his monks entered burning towns to rescue Muslims and take them to Serbian monasteries for protection. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Kosovo last summer, NATO troops were barely able to restrain a mob of Serbian nationalists from beating Artemije and sacking the monastery where he lives. Since the peace accords were signed in June, Artemije has decried the violent vengeance that Albanians took against Serbs. The violence is not the work of ordinary Albanians, he maintains, but of extremists from the Kosovo Liberation Army as well as Albanian mobsters, many of whom were not originally from Kosovo but slipped in with the returning refugees. The criminals on both sides, he maintains, are neither Christian nor Muslim, but the atheist orphans of Marxism who sometimes use religion to achieve political ends. Artemije was originally part of the transitional government in Kosovo, but he resigned to protest the failure of both the government and NATO troops to intervene when Albanians attacked Serbs and other minorities. Though world events have thrown him into politics, Artemije is a monk by training, temperament and profession. A disciple of a famous holy man during Yugoslavia's communist era, he was ordained in 1964 and did post-graduate studies in Greece. In 1978, he received permission to revive a deserted monastery. He was elected bishop of Raska and Prizren - which includes Kosovo - in 1991, as communism was giving way to nationalism. He led a monastic revival that drew hundreds of new, young monks to Kosovo's long-neglected medieval monasteries. In 1992, some of his monks baptized 2,000 converts on a single day. Last night, many people in the church hall wept as he showed videos of burning towns and churches lying in rubble. The Serbs who have not fled are confined to their homes for fear of their lives, Artemije said. Most humanitarian organizations in Kosovo work only with the Albanians, he said. A collection was taken up for relief work among Kosovar Serbs. Artemije called for the Serbian people to repent sins committed under communism and to admit that all of the misery in their land was caused by Milosevic's regime. For more information on Bishop Artemije, the Diocese of Raska and Prizren and its monasteries, see http://www.decani.yunet.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Thu Feb 24 12:39:21 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:39:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] An Electronic Spy Scare Is Alarming Europe Message-ID: <20000224173921.10252.qmail@web804.mail.yahoo.com> February 24, 2000 An Electronic Spy Scare Is Alarming Europe By SUZANNE DALEY ARIS, Feb. 23 -- Fears that the United States, Britain and other English-speaking countries are using a cold-war eavesdropping network to gain a commercial edge roused passions across Europe today, even after Washington and London roundly denied the notion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Articles Long History of Intercepting Key Words (February 24, 2000) Privacy Group Sues for U.S. Files on Spying (December 4, 1999) Lawmakers Raise Questions About Spy Network (May 27, 1999) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The subject kept the European Parliament in Brussels entranced for hours and drew banner headlines across the continent. One political cartoon showed Britain in bed with the United States, despite Britain's membership in the European Union. The hubbub grew from a report prepared for the European Parliament that found that communications intercepted by a network called Echelon twice helped American companies gain an advantage over Europeans. Whatever the merits of the latest allegations, suggestions of commercial spying have surfaced regularly in recent years. They have infuriated many Europeans who seem to have little trouble believing that military espionage systems developed in the cold war would now be used to help businesses in English-speaking nations. Echelon is a network of surveillance stations stitched together in the 1970's by the United States National Security Agency with Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand to intercept select satellite communications, according to recently declassified information in Washington. But Washington and Downing Street quickly rejected the idea that they might be using any secret information to bolster their own economies. "No is the short answer," Prime Minister Tony Blair of England said in London. "These things are governed by extremely strict rules, and those rules will always be applied." In Washington, a spokesman for the State Department, James P. Rubin, said, "U.S. intelligence agencies are not tasked to engage in industrial espionage or obtain trade secrets for the benefit of any U.S. company or companies. Although we cannot comment on the substance of the report, we can say that the N.S.A. is not authorized to provide intelligence information to private firms." The denials did little to quell European fury, especially in France, where Justice Minister ?lisabeth Guigou said French companies were being encouraged to encrypt sensitive information to avoid detection by American espionage operations. She said that Echelon had been set up as a military system, dating originally from 1948, to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union and its allies in the cold war, but that it had been converted to "economic espionage." "Today," Ms. Guigou said, "it appears that the network has been diverted to the purposes of economic espionage and for keeping a watch on competitors." The flare-up was prompted by the publication today of a report commissioned by the European Parliament 18 months ago, after initial allegations of commercial espionage. The 18-page report, which was written by a freelance journalist, Duncan Campbell, and based in large part on other newspaper accounts, said Echelon had been used by the United States to gain the advantage in at least two deals that involved major European companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fears that cold war technology is being converted to commercial use. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Campbell described Echelon as a vast coordinated system that includes a system of satellites and at least 10 listening posts worldwide that can intercept telephone calls, e-mails and faxes. The report drew skepticism from conservative parliamentarians, some of whom said it had failed to provide sufficient proof. Citing "well informed" press reports from 1995, Mr. Duncan said information learned through Echelon had been given to Boeing and the old McDonnell Douglas when they were trying to win a $6 billion contract from Saudi Arabia. His report said the spy network had intercepted calls between Airbus, the European consortium, and the Saudi airline and government officials. Mr. Campbell also said spy information had helped an American company, Raytheon, win a bid for a $1.3 billion surveillance system for the Amazon forest away from Thomson-CSF, a French company. But few details were offered about how the information was of any use to the American corporations. Each example was described in just a short paragraph. In recent years, Echelon has been criticized in the United States as an excessive intrusion into the private communications of Americans and their allies. Some critics said the system emerged from the cold war as a Big Brother without a cause. R. James Woolsey Jr., who headed the C.I.A. from 1993 to 1995, said in Washington that "basically the United States does not conduct industrial espionage." But he said the government might look into some economic areas, like questions of bribery. "You collect intelligence on bribery by some of our friends abroad . . . and then you tell the U.S. government so they can try to get the other government not to award the contract," Mr. Woolsey said today at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But you don't go to the American corporation and say 'Hey, you're about to lose,' " he said. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 24 18:56:08 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:56:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] The Times Message-ID: <20000224235608.17497.qmail@web114.yahoomail.com> The Times (London) February 24, 2000, Thursday Tara is a student nurse who was kidnapped and sold as a sex slave for Pounds 1,200 Eve-Ann Prentice The escalating number of East European women being sold to work as prostitutes in Britain has prompted a Home Office report. Eve-Ann Prentice is the first journalist to visit the hideout in Albania for victims on the run for the traffickers Seven pairs of wary, traumatised eyes stare at us as we enter the living room at the fugitives' hideout. The young women clutch one another's arms and huddle together on a sofa, watching in silence. They trust no one from the outside - and nor should they. Some of the most violent mafiosi in the world are out there, periodically scouring the warren of filthy streets looking for them. The game was nearly up two weeks ago when armed gangsters gathered outside another house that the women used as a hiding place in the Albanian capital, Tirana. Shots were fired and only the bravery of those protecting the fugitives saved the day. They smuggled the terrified women out and moved them to the new hideaway. They could be discovered again at any moment. The women seem barely old enough to warrant the mafiosi's efforts; mostly they are girls in their teens. The reason they are on the run is because they are escaped slaves - and the men who bought them want their property back. The runaways are just a tiny minority of the countless thousands of human beings bought and sold in a burgeoning trade which has spread its tentacles from the far reaches of Eastern Europe to the massage parlours of London's West End, and more recently Britain's suburbs. The merchandise in this flourishing illicit business comprises innocent girls and young women who are often kidnapped from their home towns and villages and forced into lives of violence and prostitution. They are usually bought for between Pounds 500 and Pounds 2,000 and their "owners" then make a fortune by forcing them to sell sex. The escapees' safe house is surrounded by a high wooden fence and we are ushered quickly inside. The seven young women huddled on the sofa are still in a state of shock. They include Tara, a 19-year-old former student nurse, Maria, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, and Elena, a 30-year-old mother-of-one who is desperate to know where her toddler son is and who is looking after him. All three come from Moldova; all three were sold into slavery - the 16-year-old Maria eventually being bought by a 19-year-old drug dealer who imprisoned her in his family home with his mother. Maria has a flawless peaches-and-cream complexion and waves of dark brown hair falling to her shoulders. Initially she shakes her head and refuses to speak. But after hearing others tentatively recount their experiences, she lifts her head and begins to describe the way she was bundled into a car and kidnapped as she walked near her home in the Moldovan capital, Kishinau, last September. She has not seen her family since. "I was going to my aunt's house when a car drew up and two men forced me to get in. They kept telling me that everything would be OK, but I was so frightened because I had heard about cases of girls being kidnapped and taken to be used as prostitutes," she says. "I kept asking why they were doing this but they just said I should not worry. They did not leave me alone for a second and that first night they put me in a hotel." Over the following days, Maria was driven to Timisoara in Romania, and her captors and the cars they used were changed several times. Once in Romania, she was put with 13 other young girls and they were driven on again, this time to a town in Serbia; Maria is not sure where but she recognised the Cyrillic script on road signs. Here they were locked in a house for two weeks and each day were fed a loaf of bread between them. "They were very hard conditions. It was very cold, so cold, and there were no beds," she says. "I was too frightened to try to escape but even if I had wanted to I would not have been able to. "Every day some men came and one or two of the girls were taken away. I realised they had been sold." It was here that Maria had her first experience of sex, when she was raped by one of her jailers. "I was such a little girl, of 16," she whispers. "The men were free to mistreat us as they wanted." Two weeks after being imprisoned, three men came to take her to Montenegro, the tiny mountain republic which, with Serbia, makes up Yugoslavia. "It was very, very cold and I had no coat. After four days someone came and bought me and seven other girls. We were taken in a small boat to Shkoder in Albania. After that I was taken to Durres and sold to this boy of 19. He paid $ 2,700 (Pounds 1,700). He didn't treat me as a human being and there were now just the two of us in this apartment, with his mother living upstairs. He told me his name and he spoke often in Italian and kept saying he was sorry for me. That didn't stop him using me (as a prostitute), though. I was so afraid of him; he abused me every night." Maria was rescued after two months, when the youth said he wanted to take her to Italy and she was put in a car for yet another journey. She asked the driver to help her, but he said he could not. Maria now suspects, however, that the driver took pity on her because police came to the car when it stopped at one point and she screamed for help. The girl who had begun school just five days before being snatched says she was kept in a police station for another two months before being taken to the International Organisation for Migration a Geneva-based intergovernmental group. "I cannot say the police were kind," she says. "They treated me as if I was a prostitute and I was forced to sleep on a table because there was no bed." The house which shelters the young women is one of three in the Albanian capital provided by the International Organisation for Migration and the International Catholic Migration Commission. It is pristinely clean, bright and well-furnished, in stark contrast to the jumble of fetid streets outside. I am sworn to keep the shelter's location secret, but it would be hard to describe the route to its door even if I wanted to. Rich Kocher, an Americanwhois head of the IOM mission in Albania, and his compatriate Ken Patterson, director of the ICMC, drove me through a bewildering tangle of streets and back roads, sometimes doubling back and reversing down blind alleys. At one point we passed a roadblock manned by sinister-looking men in black balaclavas bearing automatic rifles. "They are special police who wear masks to prevent anyone knowing who they are," says Patterson. "They could be targets of organised crime if they stop and search one of the mafia and find anything." The IOM is trying to help Maria to return home to her parents, three-year-old brother and 13-year-old sister, but the organisation first has to arrange travel documents. Maria is luckier than most because she was able to keep her identity card throughout her months of captivity. Most sex slaves are quickly deprived of their passports and other identity papers and issued with forgeries when they are transported abroad. This, along with language difficulties, makes escape or repatriation should they escape, doubly difficult. "I have telephoned my family," says Maria. "When I get home I will tell my parents everything that happened. I never, never thought of myself as a prostitute and still do not. What I do think is that a part of my life has been stolen." While Maria is speaking, Tara clasps a hand over her mouth and leaves the room in tears. She emerges a few minutes later, red-eyed. "I only escaped five days ago and my friend who was held captive with me has been killed," she says. "What will I tell her family?" Unlike Maria, Tara left Moldova for Albania of her own free will. She wanted to find a job to pay for her nursing studies. "In my country it is usual to leave for work abroad because there is no work at home. You even have to pay to work in the hospital," she says. She was taken hostage after applying for a job as a waitress. "They didn't believe me when I went for the job and it was obviously for prostitution work and I said I was not a prostitute. "My friend and I were sold for $ 4,000 for both of us. My friend tried to escape, she struggled very, very hard but I was more afraid and just cried. She was mistreated very badly and was soon in a terrible state. She cried and shouted all the time and that is maybe why they killed her," says Tara. The 19-year-old is too upset to describe exactly what happened to her friend, saying only, between sobs, that "they took her away and killed her". Tara was taken hostage by a drug dealer who repeatedly raped her. "Then he told me his mother was sick and I explained that I was a nurse. After that he treated me as a human being and asked me to help his mother. We understood one another very well after that because my mother is ill, too." Tara spent ten months with the man who bought her, she says, until he came to trust her. "Then one day he let me go out of the apartment. I lied to him and he thought I would come back, but I went to the police. I didn't want to go back to him because I am not a prostitute. I was also stressed and tense and couldn't stop crying and crying. The police didn't arrest him. He had much money and he could pay the police because he used to buy and sell drugs and could afford it. Everyone is so corrupt." The IOM shelters were set up in January and so far they have shielded about 15 women. Ken Patterson and Rich Kocher know that they have touched only the tip of the human-trafficking iceberg. "If we need to help thousands, we will try to do it," says Kocher. Not all the women are kidnapped; some are duped by promises of jobs abroad. It is easy to trick a naive young woman from a poverty-stricken no-hope town in Moldova or Romania into believing that there is an escape route from desolation if they accept the offer of a job as a babysitter or waitress in Italy, Belgium or London. There are also some women who willingly opt to become prostitutes, seeing it as their only chance to avoid a life of grinding poverty, and they mistakenly believe they will be able at least to store up the money they make. The reality is different, they are rarely paid for their sexual services. Almost all the women - whether kidnapped, conned or consenting - are usually raped, beaten and psychologically tortured for weeks before being sold on to pimps, brothel-owners or perverts who can afford to buy a woman for their own use. The sex-slave mafia trade is in women from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Romania, Kosovo, or Albania, where the hub of the trade is centred. The victims are then often taken by car or force-marched along remote mountain paths for days to Tirana or the Albanian coast. Many are dispatched on flimsy dinghies across the Adriatic to Italy, from where they are passed on to the red-light areas of West European capitals. Others are forced to work in Albania, Greece, or in the newest market for sex-traders - Kosovo, with its hundreds of thousands of international troops. For some women, their forced journeys end in death - either at the hands of the mafiosi if they prove to be more trouble than they are worth. Or they fail to survive the rigours of their transportation. Earlier this year the body of a young, scantily clad woman was washed up on the Albanian coast. She had rope burns on her wrists, "not because her captors had tied her up," says a Western aid worker, "but because these women lash themselves to the dinghies when they are taken across the Adriatic as they are afraid of falling overboard and drowning. This was one who didn't make it." Many victims are told that their relatives will be killed if they try to escape. This makes the courage of the seven women in their hideout in Tirana all the more remarkable. In the city's dust-choked Skanderbeg Square, the national museum is fronted with a large, epic communist mosaic portraying a woman striding confidently forward with a rifle in her strong arms. The scene is a remnant of the era of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist leader from 1946, who kept Albania in isolation for much of his rule until his death in 1985. The impoverished country finally held democratic elections in 1992, but the shock to its system of joining the cut and thrust of capitalism has left hundreds of thousands without work and living literally off the scraps which form great mounds of litter wherever you look. A miasma of disease hangs over a canal which runs through the heart of the capital and which is used as an open sewer and general rubbish tip. Huge rats rummage openly among the debris. The Third World atmosphere of Tirana has proved a fertile breeding ground for Europe's burgeoning Albanian mafia. Corruption and racketeering reach deep into Albanian society; some police are hand-in-glove with the gangsters and are widely believed to take bribes to smooth the path of the criminals they are supposed to catch. One group of escaped sex-slaves reached a police station in Durres, only to be imprisoned and repeatedly raped by the police officers over a two-month period last year, according to one Western aid worker. When they became tired of abusing the girls, they terrorised them and sent them out to work as prostitutes. However, Patterson says his organisation has begun to work with other officers. The IOM-ICMC shelters are part of a $ 640,000 project to help women who have been bought and sold, to return home. The mission also aims to help them become reintegrated in societies which often shun them after they return, suspecting that they willingly prostituted themselves. The aid project was born after a counter-trafficking workshop sponsored by the IOM and the British Government's Department for International Development in Tirana last September. The scale of the task facing those trying to help is monumental; between 250,000 and 500,000 are believed to be working as prostitutes in the European Union - "the majority having reached their destinations through illegal trafficking networks," says the IOM. "Women being trafficked into prostitution now constitute the largest single category of illegal migration to the EU." The number of women being seized and forced into unpaid prostitution is believed to have increased since Nato-led peacekeeping troops entered neighbouring Kosovo last summer. Young Kosovo- Albanian girls were also reported to have been snatched from the refugee camps set up in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro during the Kosovo crisis. "Especially alarming have been the reports of young refugee women being abducted from the camps by armed scafisti (members of Albanian organised crime), forcing these women into prostitution in Italy and elsewhere in Western Europe," the IOM said in July, last year. In London, Inspector Paul Holmes, of the Clubs and Vice unit of the Metropolitan Police, has seen a mushrooming of the numbers of Balkan women sold into prostitution. About 77 per cent of the "working girls" arrested in Soho brothels before Christmas were from the Balkans. "The Albanian situation has changed things here. We have labelled it 'trafficking by deception and threats'. In our experience, 95 per cent of the women know what they are doing by the time they get here but they have been told they will be able to come here, clear debts and make a profit," he says. "They arrive here with forged documentation, their own documentation is seized and they are put into virtual imprisonment. They have to comply with any sexual perversion or threats that are made to loved ones back home. It is effectively psychological torture. Unfortunately the law doesn't allow us to prosecute for psychological imprisonment. We are not on top of this by a long chalk," he says. The police's big fear is that "turf wars" - fights between the various gangs - may break out with so much money at stake. "The turnover in a busy brothel can be Pounds 1 million a month," says Mr Holmes. The Home Office has meanwhile asked the University of North London to investigate the growing problem of prostitutes smuggled into Britain from Eastern Europe. A report is due in March. Back in Tirana, the mosaic of the warrior woman outside the national museum is testament to a bygone Balkan era - an ironic contrast with the wretched lives of the women who are bought and sold. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 24 18:51:38 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:51:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] The Guardian Message-ID: <20000224235138.16551.qmail@web114.yahoomail.com> The Guardian (London) February 24, 2000 Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 15 Mitrovice violence prompts troops call; Radio intercepts suggest Serbs are orchestrating trouble in city Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor Nato commanders in Kosovo yesterday urgently demanded that reinforcements be sent to the province after claiming to have intercepted radio contacts between local Serbs and police units in Serbia. The latest evidence suggesting that Belgrade may be orchestrating the violence in the northern city of Mitrovice emerged as neighbouring Macedonia put some troops on high alert because of the deteriorating security situation. 'Nato does not have the troops it needs in Kosovo,' a senior Nato official confirmed last night. 'We have asked for reinforcements and the request has support.' The K-For peacekeeping mission in Kosovo was originally supposed to have 49,000 troops, but the force now numbers 30,000. There are also 7,000 soldiers from non-Nato countries. Others contingents are stationed in Macedonia. Serious overstretch has forced Britain to cut the number of its troops in the province to under 4,000, from a peak of more than 10,000 last summer. Nato commanders have requested that an additional battalion be deployed and that the Nato strategic reserve be placed on reduced notice. The request for more troops had 'received support' from Nato's North Atlantic council, and an emergency meeting on the crisis is planned for tomorrow. As well as monitoring radio conversations between Serbs, Nato intelligence has observed Yugoslav army movements in the Kosovo border area. They are thought to be training manoeuvres but could be transformed into something more aggressive at short notice. Unrest has also been growing in Serbia proper. Ethnic Albanian guerrillas have conducted small-scale infiltrations of an ethnic Albanian enclave across the border. But it was the mounting pressure in Mitrovice which triggered the request for extra peacekeepers. US, British and Canadian troops have already moved in to help the French in the flashpoint city, where Nato units struggled on Monday to hold back up to 70,000 ethnic Albanians protesting against Serb violence. Hundreds of peacekeeping troops yesterday fanned out through what the military called 'hot zones" of the city to conduct house-to-house weapons searches. 'There are still a lot of arms to recover, but this is a sign - we are here and we will continue to be here as long as it takes," said Captain Alain Racine of the French 8th Para troop brigade. By early afternoon, his squad had recovered three Kalashnikov assault rifles, several other rifles, camouflage uniforms and a variety of other weaponry. Capt Racine said most of the weapons were recovered from caches in ruined buildings, adding that there was no way of telling if they had been hid den by Serbs or Albanians. The UN also announced a plan to return Albanians to their homes in the northern, Serb-dominated side of the city and to create a secure zone from north to south. Special report on Kosovo on the Guardian network at www.newsunlimited.co.uk/kosovo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 24 18:57:23 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:57:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Times 2 Message-ID: <20000224235723.17761.qmail@web114.yahoomail.com> The Times (London) February 24, 2000, Thursday Nightclub shame James Pringle Troops of the Nato-led Kosovo Force (Kfor) guard 12 women in a safe house in Pristina who are victims of the growing sex-slave trade. It is not quite the role originally envisaged for Kfor, which intervened in the province last June after hundreds of thousands of Albanians had been forcibly expelled by Serb authorities. Case-workers describe a 22-year-old Moldovan girl housed there as "adorable". "She is keeping up the morale of the other girls in the safe house with her good spirits, appetite for life and sense of humour." The Moldovan girl was kidnapped and later sold several times. Her dream before being kidnapped had been "to work as a nanny or look after babies", an IOM official says. "She saw no future in her home country which has a deteriorating economy." The girl was one of 12 rescued in January by Italian UN peacekeepers from a nightclub just outside Pristina, near the HQ of Russian forces. Her "duties" at the club involved dispensing sexual favours - about $ 50 for half an hour - to Russian and American Kfor troops, and Albanian clients. Evidence of the sex-slave trade is increasingly common in the Balkans. Recently, while waiting for a plane at Bucharest airport, Romania, where flights also depart for Kishinau, the Moldovan capital, I saw several Balkan men waiting with attractive young women to leave for Moldova. The girls appeared to be prostitutes. At one stage money was exchanged. One attractive Moldovan girl was crying. In Greece, two girls from Romania and Ukraine were found dead recently in the snow on the border with Bulgaria. Police found another 22 women who had been wandering in the snow for three days after their contact on the Greek side of the border failed to turn up. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Thu Feb 24 18:46:03 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:46:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] A very disturbing event Message-ID: <20000224234604.15505.qmail@web114.yahoomail.com> Greek forces said to mistreat Albanians at border Source: Albanian Radio, Tirana, in Albanian 1430 gmt 22 Feb 00 Text of report by Albanian radio on 22nd February [Reporter] Last night at about 1800 [1700 gmt] two armed Greek soldiers came 500 metres into Albanian territory, to a warehouse of the former agricultural cooperative of Vrisera, in the vicinity of the village of Koshovica, and seized six Albanian citizens from Fier who had been waiting to enter Greek territory during the night. The Greek soldiers mistreated the following citizens: Rrapi Cepele, 50, of Roskovec, Albert Meta, 34, Agron Cenka, 31, Alfred Bixhaku, 35, and Ferdinand Xenga, 38, of the village of Kuman in Fier District. The Greek soldiers took all the Albanian nationals to the border, where other Greek soldiers had been waiting for them, and shoved them with their rifle butts and very savagely kicked them. They continue to maltreat Albanians also at St Marine Church, where more Greek soldiers are reported to have joined their comrades. The Greek police brought them back in their jeeps to Kakavije border post at about 2100. The Greek border police further maltreated them at the border. The Albanian police took them to the Gjirokaster hospital for treatment. One of them, hospitalized Agron Cenka, narrates: [Cenka] They handcuffed us and beat us black and blue. They kicked us, hit us with the butts of their machine-guns and their torches, and with whatever they could. All the time they kept swearing at us. They took us over to their territory, where some policemen also beat us up. Then they took us to their military unit. About 20 of them, soldiers, went on beating and manhandling us. They took our names and kept hitting us with whatever they could lay their hands on. [Reporter] This is not the only incident of maltreatment on the Albanian -Greek border in the south. Maltreatment of Albanians had place even before Greece adopted the Schengen visa system, cancelling Albanians' visas for no reason and tearing their passports to pieces. This is the second incident of maltreatment of Albanians in only four days. In the village of Likomice, in Sarande, four days ago Greek police fired their weapons at citizen Albert Mezini, who sustained two bullet wounds, while he was attempting to cross the border. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Fri Feb 25 10:06:43 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:06:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Photographic Exhibition Message-ID: <20000225150643.5808.qmail@web804.mail.yahoo.com> Dudley House "Collateral: Images from Kosovo" is a photographic installation by Andrew Hersher. (Through March 16) Dudley House is located inside Harvard Yard, the closest building to the T station. The entrance is opposite of Harvard Square. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Fri Feb 25 10:57:57 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:57:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Multi-ethnic Albania Message-ID: <20000225155757.17957.qmail@web804.mail.yahoo.com> Multi-ethnic Albania Opposition daily "Albania" highlights with great concern the consequences of a trilateral agreement, signed lately by Albania, Greece and Italy. The agreement defines that Albania should receive and employ any Eastern illegal emigrants caught in Greece and Italy. To the paper, this is another example of the irresponsibility of Albania?s politicians. Sections from the report: On Feb. 18, 2000, a trilateral agreement was signed on the Island of Corfu between the Ministers of Public Order of Greece, Italy and Albania, respectively: Kristoforidhis, Bianco and Poci. What does this agreement define? According to some incomplete and uncertain data, Albania has been charged with playing a rather odd role which is hard to perceive through normal logic: to receive, systemize and employ some hundreds of thousands of illegal emigrants from Eastern countries seized by Greek and Italian police on their soil. In other words, a country that has sent more than 800,000 emigrants abroad because it cannot afford to keep them here will employ emigrants from Morocco, Tunisia, China, Thailand and Bangladesh. It is said that the number of the first contingent will be about 40,000. In addition, this number will even include Moldavian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian prostitutes, who are often caught by the Italian coast guards or later on in Italy or Greece. They will be detained and sent to Albania. What strikes most in this sad story is the unbelievable promptness of the Albanian ministers to put their signatures to the agreement. They have lost even the barest minimum of dignity necessary for a politician and are ready to sign any document offered to them. This is called integrity, European cooperation, good friendship (?!). Albania, distinguished as the most mono-ethnic country in Europe, as well as the most tolerant towards foreign provisions, and which has agreed to consider even minorities, risks being artificially transformed into a multi-ethnic country with the consent of its state leaders. This is only the first step. Three years ago, it was said that those who were in power left us without a penny. With a twist of irony, their replacements are leaving us without a motherland. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pilika at yahoo.com Fri Feb 25 10:11:16 2000 From: pilika at yahoo.com (Asti Pilika) Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 07:11:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Pact Wipes Durres Port Off the Map Message-ID: <20000225151116.27571.qmail@web803.mail.yahoo.com> Press Review: "Gazeta Shqiptare" Pact Wipes Durres Port Off the Map A recent meeting held in Skopje decided to call off the financing for an extension to Durres port and instead give priority to that at Salonika, independent daily ?Gazeta Shqiptare? reported Stability Pact coordinator, Gramoz Pashko, who represented Albania at the meeting, as announcing. According to the paper, this decision is fatal for Albania because the rejection of the Durres port project will suffocate the whole of the great project to encompass Albania into Corridor VIII. Excerpts follow: The dream of the Albanians about the construction of Corridor VIII has already been shattered. In Wednesday?s government meeting, the declaration of the Stability Pact coordinator, Gramoz Pashko, that the Skopje meeting had decided to call off financing the extension of the largest Albanian port, came as a bolt from the blue. This economic round-table decided instead to give priority to the port of Salonika, sources in the Premier?s office said, quoting Pashko. Gramoz Pashko, the official appointed to negotiate with the international community over Albania?s priority projects failed to convince the round-table?s organizers to support the financing of the extension of Durres port. What is fatal to the Albanians, it is the fact that Salonika Port will be given a greater priority. So, the $130m project proposed by the Albanian government has been in vain. "To us, this project was the first among our priorities. A total of $96m was required for the constructing of container terminals and the remainder for the modernising of the port?s surroundings," sources from the Ministry of Public Works said. The decision of the Skopje meeting is fatal because the rejection of the Albanian project rejects the whole of the macro-project to encompass Albania into Corridor VIII on which the future development of the country is planned to depend. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Fri Feb 25 14:31:54 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 11:31:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Events at Harvard Message-ID: <20000225193154.10172.qmail@web115.yahoomail.com> The 2000 Harvard Colloquium on International Affairs: ?Ten Years after the Fall of the Wall: Transition and Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union? March 10-12, 2000 On March 10-12, Harvard Law School, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs will host the First Annual Harvard Colloquium on International Affairs: ?Ten Years after the Fall of the Wall: Transition and Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.? Celebrating the tenth anniversary of Communism?s collapse and the dawning of a new century, the Colloquium represents a University-wide, interdisciplinary effort to bring together Harvard?s vast resources in the field of international affairs. The three-day event will feature keynote speakers, including former National Security Adviser General Brent Scowcroft and former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, as well as individual panels focusing on questions of politics, economics, law, and security. Different programs and centers from across the University will sponsor each panel, including: The Davis Center for Russian Studies (U.S.-Russian Relations) The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (German Reunification) The John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies (East-West Military Relations) The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (Nuclear Security Issues) The Graduate Program at Harvard Law School (Governance Issues) The Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School (Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict) The Center for International Development (Economic Restructuring & Finance and Investment in the Post-Communist World) The Harvard School of Public Health (Public Health and the Environment) The Women and Public Policy Program (Women in Post-Communist Societies) The European Union Center (European Union in an Undivided Europe) Confirmed panelists include Anders Aslund, Polish Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz, European Union Ambassador Gunther Burghardt, Prof. Ashton Carter, Lieutenant General William Odom, activist Dimitrina Petrova, author David Rieff, former Undersecretary of State Robert Zoellick, and many others. The Colloquium will also feature a live webcast of all panels and keynote speeches, along with supporting materials for the Colloquium and taped interviews with public policy leaders. After the Colloquium the website will become a portal for the scholarly and professional study of international affairs. SCHEDULE FRIDAY 4:00 Keynote Address: General Brent Scowcroft Venue: Ames Courtroom 5:30 Opening Plenary Panel: German Reunification Sponsor: Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies Venue: Ames Courtroom Prof. Charles Maier Director, Center for European Studies, Harvard University Mr. Robert Zoellick Research Scholar, Belfer Center, Harvard University; Fellow, The German Marshall Fund of the United States; Former Undersecretary of State & White House Deputy Chief of Staff Prof. Philip Zelikow Director, Miller Center; White Burkett Miller Professor of History, University of Virginia Prof. Jens Reich Presidential Candidate in 1993 SATURDAY 9:00 First Panel Series Economic Restructuring in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union Sponsor: Harvard Center for International Development Venue: Austin East Professor Jeffrey Sachs Director, Harvard Center for International Development Minister Leszek Balcerowicz Minister of Finance, Poland Dr. Anders Aslund Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace East-West Military Relations Sponsor: Olin Institute for Strategic Studies Venue: Hauser 102 Prof. Stephen Walt Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government Lieutenant General William Odom (ret?d) Director, National Security Studies, The Hudson Institute Dr. Colonel Vitaly Shlykov Consultant; former member, Russian General Staff Dr. David Chu Vice President, Army Research Division; Director, RAND Arroyo Center 10:30 Coffee Break Venue: Austin Foyer 11:00 Second Panel Series Nuclear Security Issues in the Former Soviet Bloc Sponsor: The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Venue: Austin East Prof. Graham Allison Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Director, Belfer Center; former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Prof. Ashton Carter Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs; former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Dr. Sergei Karagonov Chairman, Institute of Europe Dr. Sergei Rogov Director, Institute of USA and Canada Dr. Laura Holgate Director, Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, Department of Energy; former Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction, Department of Defense Mr. Matthew Bunn Assistant Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University; former Advisor to the Office of Science and Technology Policy European Union in an Undivided Europe Sponsor: The European Union Center Venue: Hauser 102 Prof. George Ross Director, European Union Center Prof. Andrew Moravscik Professor, Government Department, Harvard University Prof. Stanley Hoffmann University Professor, Harvard University Ambassador Gunther Burghardt Ambassador of the European Union to the United States Public Health & Environmental Issues in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union Sponsor: School of Public Health Venue: Hauser 104 Dr. Alexei Yablokov Director, Center for Russian Environmental Policy; Professor, Russian Federation Academy of Sciences; Former Special Counselor to President Yeltsin on the Environment and Public Health Dr. Paul Farmer Associate Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School Dr. Kevin Rushing Program Officer in Charge, USAID Central Asia Republics Desk Prof. Bedrich Moldan Former Minister of the Environment, Czech Republic; Chairman of the Board, Regional Environmental Center Prof. Daniel Cole M. Dale Palmer Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law Prof. Jennifer Leaning Professor of International Health, Harvard School of Public Health 1:00 Lunch 3:00 Third Panel Series Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Sponsor: The Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School Venue: Hauser 102 Prof. Henry Steiner Director, Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School Ms. Dimitrina Petrova Executive Director, European Roma Rights Center Mr. John Packer Senior Legal Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Mr. David Rieff Author and Journalist Finance and Investment in the Post-Communist World Sponsor: Harvard Center for International Development Venue: Austin East Ms. Sara Sievers Executive Director, Center for International Development Mr. John Hewko Partner, Baker & McKenzie Mr. Richard Wood Founder, Wood & Co., Prague Mr. Alan Bigman SUNDAY 10:00 Fourth Panel Series Governance Issues in Transitional Societies Sponsor: Harvard Law School Graduate Program Venue: Hauser 102 Prof. Stephen Holmes Professor of Political Science, Princeton University; Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University Prof. Alexander Blankenagel Professor of Law, Humboldt University, Berlin Prof. Ruti Teitel Professor, New York Law School Prof. Jacques Rupnik Director of Research and Professor at the Center for International Affairs, Fondations Nationale des Sciences Politiques The Role of Women in Post-Communist Societies Sponsor: The Women and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government Venue: Hauser 104 Ambassador Swanee Hunt Director, Women and Public Policy Program; former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Ms. Irina Ignatieva Project Coordinator, Banking on Russian Women Senator Jara Moserova Vice President, Senate of the Czech Republic Dr. Laura Lederer Director, Protection Project, John F. Kennedy School of Government Ms. Dasa Sasic Silovic Senior Advisor, UNDP Global Gender in Development Programme/Bureau for Development Policy Dr. Elena Gapova Director, Center for Gender Studies, European Humanities University, Minsk 12:00 Closing Panel: Relations between Russia and the United States Sponsor: Davis Center for Russian Studies Venue: Ames Courtroom Prof. Timothy Colton Director, Davis Center for Russian Studies Mr. Andrei Kozyrev Former Russian Foreign Minister; Member of the Committee of the State Duma for Budget, Taxes, Banks and Finances Mr. Mark Medish Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Eurasia, National Security Council __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From pulab at gusun.georgetown.edu Thu Feb 24 22:01:41 2000 From: pulab at gusun.georgetown.edu (Besnik Pula) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 22:01:41 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Fwd: The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text The following paper can be downloaded or ordered directly from the web site of the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI): Schwandner-Sievers, Stephanie. The Albanian Aromanians' Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania. Flensburg: European Centre for Minority Issues, 1999. (=ECMI Working Paper #3) http://www.ecmi.de/publications/working_papers_reports.htm --- end forwarded text From aalibali at yahoo.com Sat Feb 26 22:57:49 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 19:57:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Apokalipsi i qyteterimit shqiptar Message-ID: <20000227035749.28420.qmail@web111.yahoomail.com> KOHA JONE Apokalipsi i qyteterimit shqiptar Pse duhen ruajtur vlerat substanciale te qyteterimit shqiptar. Ne qytetet muzeore kane rendesi te madhe shtepite muzeore. Ato jane pjese e te teres. Ato shprehin jo vetem te pjesshmen, lokalen por shume me teper se te teren Moikom Zeqo Me duket e tmerrshme t'i deformosh karakterin etnik te qytetit te kampioneve qe kane arritur rekordet me te larta te qyteterimit shqiptar, te dijetarit te shkelqyer Eqrem Cabej dhe te shkrimtarit te paperseritshem Ismail Kadare. Do te ishte teper paradoksale qe ne Gjirokastren e ketyre dy kryemjeshtrave te gjuhes shqipe pas disa dhjetevjecaresh te kishim thjesht nje vendbanim te shume gjuheve dhe shume etnive dhe madje gjuha shqipe ta humbiste forcen dhe fuqine e saj dhe prinjojte e Gjirokastres te mesonin dhe te shprehnin ne nje gjuhe tjeter shume me mire se sa ne gjuhen shqipe. Vdekja e qyteteve eshte vdekja e qyteterimit shqiptar. Vdekja e qyteteve eshte zvetenimi me i rende dhe i shperberjes morale te banoreve te trye. Eshte thelbesisht morale qe ne shqiptaret t'i shpetojme nga vdekja kryeqendrat e qyteterimit shqiptar. Me ndihmen e skulptorit te shquar gjirokastrit Stefan Papamihali kerkova te shoh ne Gjirokaster shtepine ku ka jetuar dikur familja e Eqrem Cabejt. Per fatin e mire kjo shtepi egziston akoma dhe eshte ne nje gjendje relativisht te mire. Shtepia i eshte shitur ne vitin 1960 qytetarit Asllan Sejdo. Pashe me syte e mi dokumentin e shitjes nenshkruar nga noteri Stathi Naso me 9 nentor 1960 ku eshte shenuar midis pjesetareve te famijes edhe emri i Eqrem Cabejt. Ky dokument verteton katerciperisht se kjo eshte shtepia ne disa breza e familjes se Eqrem Cabejt. Shtepia ka vlera monumentale, ka relieve te gdhendura ne gur, harqe te shkelqyer si dhe mbishkirme te lashta te bera ne afresk. Me gjalleroi mendimi se fare mire disa nga dhomat e shtepise mund te ktheheshin ne nje muze per Eqrem Cabejn. Nje muze e Cabejt do te thote nje tempull per nderimin e gjuhes shqipe. Miqte e mi dhe intelektualet e Gjirokastres e priten me nje entuziazem te spikatur kete ide. Askush nuk mund ta mohoje dot qyteterimin shqiptar. Ky qyteterim eshte i lashte dhe i ri, percaktohet qarte nga struktura e nje shpirti kombetar dhe e nje tradite mijeravjecare te jetes si veprimtari e gjalle, si e kaluar, si e tanishme dhe si e ardhme potenciale. Ky qyteterim eshte nje dimension i qyteterimit ballkanik dhe evropian, i qyteterimit boteror ne pergjithesi, ose "i bashkesise se qyteterimeve te gjalla dhe te vdekura", sic do te shprehej antropologu i famshem amerikan Arnold Tojbni. Nuk kam ndermend te bej nje skice sinoptike apo nje sinteze lakonike te qyteterimit shqiptar. Eshte fakti qe librat pergjithesues ne rrafshin albanologjik dhe te veteparaqitjes objektive te qyteterimit shqiptar jane shume te pakta sa qe mund te quhen me teper fragmente qe nuk bejne dot nje teresi te organizuar dhe unike. Dijetaret, akademiket, filologet, etnologet, historianet e artit dhe te vete qyteterimit shqiptar kane bere ne te vertete dicka per ate qe quhet dija albanologjike ne pergjithesi, por ende nuk mund te flasim per nje shkolle autoritative te shkences se shqiptareve per veten e tyre deri ne ate mase dhe deri ne ate lartesi qe kerkon perparimi i dijeve njerezore me fillimin e mijevjecarit te trete. Gjate nje vizite disa ditore ne Gjirokaster me rastin e nje veprimtarie per dhenien e nje vleresimi nga ana e Bashkise se Gjirokastres "Nderi i Gjirokastres" personaliteteve te tilla te paperseritshme si Eqerem Cabej, Musine Kokalari dhe Ismail Kadare pata rastin te shoh me syte e mi disa realitete, te ballafaqoj disa shqetesime te medha te njerezve, ndaj me duket detyre qytetare qe te shpreh ndonje mendim qofte dhe ne formen e nje apeli mbarekombetar per ruajtjen e vlerave substanciale te qyteterimit shqiptar. Vdekja e qyteteve Ky togfjalesh - "Vdekja e qyteteve" tingellon si nje motiv funeber, si jashte kohe, gati - gati dicka e pabesueshme. Nuk besoj se po sterzmadhoj, kjo do te thote qe nuk po shpik as po shpif. Vizitoni qytetet qe perbejne krenarine e qyteterimit shqiptar! Shikoni se ka nje vdekje te dukshme fizike te ketyre qyteteve ne kete dhjetevjeceshin e fundit. Shtepite monumentale dhe muzeore te Shkodres si p.sh. ajo e Luigj Gurakuqit, e Migjenit, etj. jane shkaterruar, jane prishur shume banesa karakteristike popullore. Eshte gati nje gjeme e pariparueshme. Durresi, qyteti im i lindjes shtepi te reja duke demtuar dhe prekur e dhunuar ligjin shteteror per ruajtjen e monumenteve, duke krijuar nje katrahure dhe nje kaos. Berati akoma me keq: duke qene nje qytet i shpallur muze, nje qytet i pazakonte dhe i vecante, qyteti i kodikeve te vjeter dhe i pikturave te Onufrit dhe te birit te tij Nikolles ai duhej te kishte nje patronazh jo vetem ligjor dhe financiar por dhe restaurues dhe shkencor per te mos vdekur pasaporta muzeore e qytetit. Askush nuk e di se si do te jete e ardhmja e shtepive muzeore te qytetit qe quhej dikur "qyteti i njemije e nje dritareve". Por qyteti ku njeriu qe e sheh ve duart ne koke, me i renuari ndoshta dhe me i shperfytyruari me shume kuptime eshte Gjirokastra. Shkoj shpesh ne Gjirokaster dhe sa here qe e shoh trishtohem. Rrenimi i Gjirokastres behet gati me nje shpejtesi marramendese. Zonat muzeore te qytetit madje dhe shtepite me rasa guri te Qafes se Pazarit qe perben celesin konceptual te formulimit urbanistik te Gjirokastres jane demtuar, ka prej ketyre shtepive muzeore qe kane vene ne vend te cative siperfaqe te shemtuara llamarinash me nje papergjegjesi banale dhe nje pakujdesi kriminale jane bere ndertime te reja te shemtuara, adaptime te neveritshme, jane bere shtesa prej betoni qe jane ne kundershtim te plote me strukturen origjinale dhe karakteristike te Gjirokastres si nje nga qytetet me te bukur dhe me te vecante jo vetem ne rrafsh ballkanik, por dhe evropian. Demtime te medha ka edhe keshtjella vigane e Gjirokastres ndoshta me e madhja ne Ballkan. Muzeu i armeve brenda keshtjelles sehte shkaterruar ne menyre te llahtarshme. Tmerrohesh nga kjo gje. Nuk ke fuqi as te pyesesh veten: pse ka ndodhur kjo gjeme? S'ke fuqi as te thuash: Kush e ka fajin? Shkaterrime dhe renime ka dhe ne nje tjeter qytet te rendesishem shqiptar sic eshte nje nga qytetet arketipale te Shqiperise, qyteti i Korces. Te cmend ideja e levizjes pa asnje kuptim te skulptures kryeveper te Odise Paskalit, te "Luftetarit te Panjohur". Te habit fakti qe asnje intelektual shqiptar nuk e ngre zerin dhe nuk flet per marrezite qe po ndodhin ne qytete. Deri tani rezultojne afro 800 ikona te vjedhura, disa qindra skulptura dhe objekte arkeologjike ne Durres, ne Apolloni, ne Butrint etj. Para disa ditesh u vodh ne drite te Diellit ikonostasi i famshem i Kishes se Leuses ne Permet. E tmerrshme. Ikonostasi nuk eshte nje kokerr molle qe mund ta fshehesh ne xhep. Kishat e pazevendesueshme te Voskopojes qe perbejne nje koleksion te jashtezakonshem po renohen mes nje indiference te paimagjinueshme. Jane vjedhur pikturat e shtepise muze te piktorit Vangjush Mio, ikonat e David Selenicasit dhe Konstandin Shpatarakut. Dhjetera mijera objekte etnografike, doreshkrime, libra te vjeter, figura te mrekullueshme te artizanatit popullor, doreshkrime, piktura te ndryshme, relike madje eshte bere nje gjueti e shtrigave dhe per koralet e rralla te detit Jon dhe te amforave te nenujshme, duke e renuar dhe arkeologjine nenujore shqiptare etj., etj. tablloja pra, eshte vetem uleritese dhe ngjethese. Ne Gjirokaster pata rastin te them publikisht se rrenimi i Gjirokastres do te thote te shkaterrohet bastioni me i madh i qyteterimit shqiptar ne Jug. E theksoj: e qyteterimit shqiptar, se me duket e tmerrshme t'i deformosh karakterin etnik te qytetit te kampioneve qe kane arritur rekordet me te larta te qyteterimit shqiptar, te dijetarit te shkelqyer Eqrem Cabej dhe te shkrimtarit te paperseritshem Ismail Kadare. Do te ishte teper paradoksale qe ne Gjirokastren e ketyre dy kryemjeshtrave te gjuhes shqipe pas disa dhjetevjecaresh te kishim thjesht nje vendbanim te shume gjuheve dhe shume etnive dhe madje gjuha shqipe ta humbiste forcen dhe fuqine e saj dhe prinjojte e Gjirokastres te mesonin dhe te shprehnin ne nje gjuhe tjeter shume me mire se sa ne gjuhen shqipe. Vdekja e qyteteve eshte vdekja e qyteterimit shqiptar. Vdekja e qyteteve eshte zvetenimi me i rende dhe i shperberjes morale te banoreve te trye. Eshte thelbesisht morale qe ne shqiptaret t'i shpetojme nga vdekja kryeqendrat e qyteterimit shqiptar. Por qe te kesh moral duhet te kesh patjeter dinjitet. Pa dinjitet nuk mund te jesh njeri i gjalle. Pa dinjitet nuk mund te jesh qytetar. Bej nje pyetje: Kush eshte ai njeri ne Shqiperi qe ne sheshet qendrore te qyteteve tona, te shesheve historike qe perbejne pasaporten urbanistike te qyteteve thelbesisht shqiptare lejoka vend e pa vend te ngrihen vetem katedrale vigane te stilit ortodoks grek teper te kushtueshme, keshtjella maramendese betoni qe zoterojne dhe percaktojne nje pamje krejt tjeter. Te njejten gje kam dhe per ngritjen e tempujve te tjere te feve te tjera. Ideja ime ka te beje me respektimin deri ne fund te feve, te te gjitha feve pa perjashtim, por askush nuk ka te drejte te prishe formulimet historike urbanistike te qyteteve muzeore etj. Shume qytete qe u shkaterruan teresisht nga bombardimet ne Luften e Dyte Boterore si Drezdeni ne Gjermani apo Gdansku ne Poloni i ribene teresisht ndertimet e tyre sipas formulimeve historike dhe urbanistike te tyre sic kishin qene ne origjinal perpara shkaterrimit total. Ky mesim dhe kjo pervoje vlen dhe per ne shqiptaret. Shtepite muze te Cabejt dhe te Kadarese Ne qytetet muzeore kane rendesi te madhe shtepite muzeore. Ato jane pjese te se teres. Ato shprehin jo vetem te pjesshmen, lokalen por shume me teper se te teren. Ato nuk jane dhe nuk mund te jene vetem te Gjirokastres por e tejkalojne edhe peizazhin e mjedisit. Ato shtepi jane te shenjta edhe per Shkodren edhe per Shkupin edhe per tetoven edhe per Prishtinen edhe per Prizrenin dhe Gjakoven. Shtepia monumentale e Kadarese u dogj dhe u be shkrumb nga nje pakujdesi aspak e justifikuar. Shkova dhe i pashe rrenojat dhe muret qe qendronin te djegur. Une qe kam qene dhe e kam njohur kete shtepi, ku kam ardhur shpesh se bashku me Kadarene, madje kam fjetur tek kjo shtepi qe mbaj mend dhe kam shenime sidomos per pjesen e drunjte te mjedisit te shtepise, qe dicka e rende te shikoja shkaterrimin. Pavaresisht se eshte caktuar nje fond prej 250 milion leke te vjetra per ta restauruar kete shtepi une jam skeptik sepse cfaredolloj restaurimi nuk mund te beje me karakterin autentik te mjedisit te brendshem dhe te morfologjise se nderteses. Megjithate le te shpresojme. Me ndihmen e skulptorit te shquar gjirokastrit Stefan Papamihali kerkova te shoh ne Gjirokaster shtepine ku ka jetuar dikur familja e Eqrem Cabejt. Per fatin e mire kjo shtepi egziston akoma dhe eshte ne nje gjendje relativisht te mire. Shtepia i eshte shitur ne vitin 1960 qytetarit Asllan Sejdo. Pashe me syte e mi dokumentin e shitjes nenshkruar nga noteri Stathi Naso me 9 nentor 1960 ku eshte shenuar midis pjesetareve te famijes edhe emri i Eqrem Cabejt. Ky dokument verteton katerciperisht se kjo eshte shtepia ne disa breza e familjes se Eqrem Cabejt. Shtepia ka vlera monumentale, ka relieve te gdhendura ne gur, harqe te shkelqyer si dhe mbishkirme te lashta te bera ne afresk. Me gjalleroi mendimi se fare mire disa nga dhomat e shtepise mund te ktheheshin ne nje muze per Eqrem Cabejn. Nje muze e Cabejt do te thote nje tempull per nderimin e gjuhes shqipe. Miqte e mi dhe intelektualet e Gjirokastres e priten me nje entuziazem te spikatur kete ide. Ndersa po shkruaj keto rradhe vetvetiu them: pse nuk ka shtepi muze ne fshatin e lindjes ne Troshan poeti i madh kombetar Gjergj Fishta? Si humbi dhe pse nuk ka varr gjeniu i lirikes shqiptare Ndre Mjeda? Si ka mundesi qe shtepia muzeore e Lasgush Poradecit ne qytetin e tij te lindjes te mos ribehet nga Instituti i Monumenteve dhe ta beje me beton ne menyre te shemtuar nje privat? Pse eshte mbyllur shtepia muze e Kristoforidhit ne Elbasan? Pse jane shkaterruar shume muzeume lokale, kryesisht muzeume te qyteteve te medha te Shqiperise? Nderim per Institutin e Monumenteve te Shqiperise Instituti i Monumenteve te Shqiperise duhet nderuar si nje institucion qe ka luajtur nje rol kolosal ne mbrojtjen dhe restaurimin e monumenteve te qyteterimit shqiptar. Per gjysme shekulli ky institut ka bere nje pune te lavderueshme kudo ne Shqiperi. Meritat dhe ndihmesat e ketij instituti jane te pallogaritshme. Shkolla shqiptare e mbrojtjes dhe e ruajtjes dhe restaurimit te monumenteve te Shqiperise ka arritur nivele boterore. Punimet nderhyrese dhe restauruese te ketij Instituti kane qene te nje niveli shkencor te larte sepse kane respektuar karakterin autentik te monumenteve dhe nuk i kane bere keto monumente ne menyre butaforike. Me ka rene rasti te shoh resaturimet e keshtjelles se Ulqinit, te Tivarit dhe te Kotorrit ne Malin e Zi dhe jam tmerruar kur kam pare rindertime butaforike apo restaurime te bera per hir te turizmit duke shperfytyruar dhe strukturat origjinale te monumenteve. Kurse Instituti shqiptar ka respektuar nje koncept tejet te perparuar dhe modern. Kam respektin me te madh per punonjesit shkencore te ketij Instituti, jo vetem per dijetaret por dhe punetoret e thjeshte qe kane bere restaurimet qe kane pervoja te cuditshme dhe te pazevendesueshme. Eshte fatkeqesi kombetare qe punonjesit e ketij Instituti per shkak te pagave shume te ulta dhe ofenduese jane larugar jo vetem nga Instituti por dhe nga ateliete neper rrethe. Fondi qe ka ne dispozicion Instituti eshte qesharak ne raport me ate qe duhet te kete per te shpetuar monumentet dhe qendrat e qyteterimit shqiptar. Kam mendimin se Instituti i Monumenteve duhet vleresuar maksimalisht nga shteti dhe duhet te jete i patjetersueshem dhe i pazevendesueshem ne rolin e tij paresor ne ruajtjen dhe restaurimin e monumenteve te Shqiperise sone. Si ka mundesi qe ne kohen e monizmit ky Institut te kete patur nje fond te tille dhe ka bere ne te vertete mrekullira ne qytetet muzeore te Shqiperise, kurse sot ne kohen e qarkullimit te miliona dollareve brenda per brenda Shqiperise nuk u gjendkan fonde dyfish por mbase dhe dhjetefish me te medha se perpara vitit 1991 per te bere te mundur ringjalljen dhe fuqizimin e pakontestueshem te ketij Instituti? Post Scriptum Nuk dua te terheq ne menyre artificiale vemendjen e opinionit publik. Nese ka nje apokalips te qyteterimit shqiptar kjo do te thote se vetem vetedija jone mund te na siguroje mbijetesen e qyteterimit shqiptar. Nuk besoj qe raca e politikaneve di sekretin e duarve magjike te Midiasit, mbretit mitik frigas, qe kur prekte sendet i kthente ato ne ar. Nuk besoj qe vetem intelektualet mund te bejne cudira duke kundershtuar opinionet e mbrapshta dhe duke ndertuar opinione te drejta. Besoj se vete i gjithe populli shqiptar qe eshte gjeneza dhe mbartesi i mbijeteses se qyteterimit shqiptar ka dhe di sekretet e medha dhe te thjeshta te kesaj mbijetese. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From aalibali at yahoo.com Sun Feb 27 19:36:30 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 16:36:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] From the archives Message-ID: <20000228003630.27017.qmail@web112.yahoomail.com> "Northern Epirus" between myth and reality by Ardian Vehbiu 1. Questioning history Northern Epirus is a mythic-geographical expression that, during this century, has acquired some pseudo-historical, and pseudo-cultural meaning, thanks to the efforts of fanatic political, religious and cultural groups and associations in Greece and in the Greek Diaspora. It now offers the base to a nationalistic doctrine, which represents the sum of all Greek claims of Albanian territories. "Northern Epirus" is the Greek name for those Albanian territories lying between the river Shkumbin and the country's Southern border, generally known as Tosk?ria in broader sense (i.e., including Lab?ria). The historical purport of this expression got the upper hand on its descriptive meaning as soon as Albania acquired the independence and had its southern border recognized by the Great Powers. The core of the Vorio-Epirote doctrine can be summarized as follows: the population inhabiting the northern part of Epirus, in spite of its speaking Albanian, is basically Greek, as is positively Greek all southern Albanian territory. The "true" Albanians, who are Muslim (or Catholic) belong therefore to the north of Shkumbini river. The doctrine, to justify its historical absurdity, tries to minimize the Albanian contribution to the history of the area. According to it, the only light in Albania's historically perpetual dark age has always come from the glorious Hellenic beacon. Therefore the Albanians are not the descendants of Illyrians, but simply nomad Middle Age invaders, who later settled themselves as "mountaineer pirates," and survived by raping "virgin" Greek Adriatic cities. Most of southern Albanians are indeed "Albanian speaking Greeks," who have not forgotten their attachment to their Hellenic motherland. The ethnic Albanians, i.e. the Moslems, through all their known (short) history, have typically sided with Greece's enemies and fought for the destruction of the Greek nation, deeply ungrateful to that "historical" fact that all Albanian major historic achievements are due to the Greek territorial presence, religious influence, and cultural glory. Throughout the ages, Greece is supposed to have fought for the education of these ungracious sons -- barbarous, illiterate and without a history as they were. Allied to the infidel Turks, they allegedly were among the cruelest in suppressing with blood the Greek revolution. Allied to the Italians and later to the Germans, they terrorized Greece, and slain its best anti-fascist heroes ... 2. Crossroads According to the Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires Northern Epirus, as a part of Epirus, is fundamentally Greek, because it has been Greek (Hellenic) since classical times. This represents, because of the historical nature of their claims, a main argument, although the ethnic tableau of the ancient Epirus is far from being established. Although a couple of ancient Greek and Latin writers speak of Epirus as predominantly Hellenic, other very important authors clearly distinguish between Greeks and Epirotes. Moreover, the criteria used by ancient scholars to determine the ethnicity of an area are not homogeneous and fully understandable. Often what they consider Hellenic territories are simply lands touched by Greek colonists, as it seems to be the case with Epirus. The ancient Epirote tribes -- Molosses, Chaones, and Thesprotes -- are believed to have spoken a language different from Greek, though it is not an easy task to establish their exact relationship to northern Illyrian tribes. Some modern linguists think there is a degree of kinship between the mentioned tribes and the Messapes -- a people of strange and still enigmatic inscriptions -- who had emigrated to southern Italy (Salento) since proto-historic times and have long been considered as related to Illyrians. The character of Greek expansion during Antiquity was not a classic ethnic expansion wave. Greek colonies could not exist without prolific relations with local tribes and populations, and the very fact of their being founded here and not there is a proof for other populations being already in place, to trade with. Nevertheless, and thanks also to the benevolence of Rome, the Greek influence and cultural primacy in Epirus -- as in other areas of the Mediterranean -- remained important throughout the Antiquity. In the early Middle Ages, with the disruption of political balances created by the Roman empire, things start to change, as Epirus received several unwanted "visits" from barbarous tribes, which contributed in creating a kind of "primordial soup," out of which the modern Balkans ethnic map would be conceived. There is today indisputable linguistic evidence of a significant Slavic presence in the area, noticeable in the numerous Slavic place names (mountains, plains, valleys, rivers, cities, villages), though scholars do not agree as to the origin of these names. 3. Tosk autochtony The Albanian southern dialect -- the Tosk -- with some of its basic phonetic features, was already in place, as it is witnessed by the phonetic evolution of some place names known to have been employed since the late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In fact, the Albanian main dialectal division is rather old, and in their most antique lexical strata both Albanian dialects do not show any significant difference regarding the phonetic treatment of old and Medieval Greek loans. It has been satisfactorily shown that even Greek Medieval (Byzantine) loans are often cultural, and hardly due to immediate and intensive population contact. On the other hand, the plentiful Slavic place names in Epirus toponomastics might make one think of the possibility of existence of isolated southern Slavic tribes (old Bulgarians), serving, concomitantly with Latin population (Aromanian) enclaves, as a buffer between Greek- and proto-Albanian-populated areas. It is indisputably evident, on the other hand, that no Albanian dialect or sub-dialect presents nowadays traces of a Greek substrate, and this constitutes a valid proof that no Greek population in the territory of the so-called northern Epirus has ever been assimilated by Albanians, as the Vorio-Epirote doctrine wants to make us believe. Even the tormented ?ams have probably been there since proto-historical times, for geographical linguistics assigns to their dialect a place right between the Lab?rishte and the Arb?rishte (the latter as a common denominator of the dialects of the Arvanites), while historical onomastics explains their ethnonyme as the direct continuation -- within Albanian phonetic structure and according to its phonetic evolution rules -- of the name of the local river Thyamis. The scarcity of contacts between Greeks and Albanians can also find support in the established fact that ALL old Christian terminology in Albanian is of Latin, not of Greek origin. The same current dialectal structure of Albanian, with its relative continuity and smooth passages between various dialects, is a further proof of old stable links between the above-mentioned dialects and the territory where they are spoken. On both sides of Shkumbin river -- considered by the Vorio-Epirote doctrine as the upper border of Northern Epirus, dividing Greek "Lebensraum" from the "genuine" Albanian one -- a lot of transitional dialectal phenomena are found, which witness territorial stability of the dialects. 4. Tosks in Albanian culture The Vorio-Epirote doctrine is born of the Greek conservative cultural atmosphere. It is clear that any attempt to enhance the Greek legacy in the so-called northern Epirus is meant as an attempt to annihilate the Albanian Tosk heritage in southern Albania, or to attribute it to some obscure Ottoman and/or Islamic superstrate. The undeniable fact that the Albanian resurrection during the last century was also due to the efforts of a brilliant elite of Tosk patriots of Christian Orthodox faith -- among which Naum Veqilharxhi, Jani Vreto, Nikolla Na?o, Petro Nini Luarasi, Papa Kristo Negovani, etc., whose work was later brought forward by Fan Noli, Themistokli Germenji, Mihal Grameno etc. -- constitutes for them only a regrettable proof of "racially superior" Vorio-Epirotes yielding their services to a culturally lost and corrupt cause: the Albanian resurrection. The Rilindja cultural patriotic movement in the South was related to Southern Albania being the cradle of Bektashism, a religious sect inspired by a philosophy which, thanks to its syncretism and eclecticism, and to its faith in enlightenment and tolerance, would serve as a catalyst to the cultural awakening of the entire region. The Frash?ri brothers, Abdyl, Naim e Sami, who are generally considered as the apostles of the Albanian Rilindja, and who were born in a village of P?rmeti, i.e., in full "Vorio-Epirote" immersion, could not have existed without their sound Bektashi background and faith. Of course, the contribution of southern Albanians to the making up of an Albanian cultural koin? is not limited to the anti-Ottoman efforts of Albanian Christian Orthodox communities and individuals. Some Islamic cultural centers, the most famous of which is Berat, were able to produce, during the 18th century, a considerable "aljamiado" literature, which for the first time in Albania dealt directly with non-religious motives and themes. On the other hand, it was the Greek religious obscurantism, fully supported by the Ottoman establishment, which would not allow the development of the Albanian script and literature in the South, in a time when important religious literature was being written and published by Gheg Catholic writers in the North. 5. The Byzantine legacy >From a historical point of view, Epirus, in spite of its being often under Hellenic influence, has always been part of some multinational empire. After Pyrrhus and his victories against Rome, Epirus had its second moment of glory with the constitution of the Despotate, after the crusaders took over Costantinople, and the empire had a structural breakdown. It is true that Byzance preserved for a long time its Hellenic core, but it is also true that it remained all the time a conglomerate of peoples, languages, and cultures. The same holds true for the Ottoman empire. If the Greeks succeeded in maintaining a cultural primacy in both empires, thanks to a solid dedication to their glorious past, other Balkan peoples saw in them hope for getting rid of the Ottoman yoke, at least culturally. The cultural center of Voskopoja, multi-ethnic in its scopes and its targets, flourished exactly thanks to these fruitful multi-cultural contacts. It was savagely destroyed by the Ottomans not because it was Greek, but because it could become a model for an anti-Ottoman cultural aggregation and alliance in the Balkans. We know of the very complex ethnic structure of the Byzantine empire. The Greek bureaucrats, soldiers, priests, and merchants constituted most of its notorious aristocracy, which is why we find today clear evidence of Greek cultural presence in all important Byzantine urban centers, to begin with Durr?s. It is also evident, however, that the pyramidal social structure of Byzance mirrored its ethnic structure, that is, different peoples occupied different social niches. It might even be said that illiteracy, for which Albanians have traditionally been blamed, probably saved them from being entirely absorbed in the imperial Hellenic mainstream. The Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires draw their inspiration from Medieval religious obscurantism, but very often their delirious claims serve perfectly the efforts of modern Greek chauvinism to create hotbeds of instability in territories of Greece's neighbors. Their use of historical and religious (pseudo-) arguments speaks for the worst Byzantine legacy reigning in their minds. It is unbelievable how in a country like Greece, that pretends to be modern European, one can still find such relics, survived from old forgotten times, and nostalgic of a mythic past that has never existed. The Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires are ambassadors of a world that has failed to pass through the European renaissance and rationalism, but has jumped from medieval mysticism, to extreme nationalistic romanticism. Retired in their delusional world of ghosts, old national hatred, and chauvinism, they keep on fighting with long-gone enemies, while trying to keep burning their anachronistic pan-Hellenic torch. Their Orthodox religious background transforms them into lunatic apostles of a rotten, medieval vision of Europe, while their political activities, whenever have taken place, have led to intolerance, fascism, and genocide. As a matter of fact, the Vorio-Epirote doctrine often appears as an extreme expression of the mainstream nationalism in modern Greek culture. It seems that a non-negligible part of it seems incapable of overcoming the inferiority complex due to confrontation with that cultural giant of Ancient Classical Greece. Because of this inferiority complex, some people erroneously believe that modern Greek culture is the truly legitimate heir of this glorious past, while other people indulge in a ritualistic use of tradition, being unable to distinguish between symbol and meaning, religion and ethnicity, present and past. 6. Illusions and delusions The big illusion of Greek nationalism is that Greek Christian Orthodoxy and the Orthodoxy-related structure constitute evidence of a population being basically Greek. They will never accept the idea of a nation whose roots for a long time have lain on common language orality. A culture for which ethnic roots are to be sought in religion and script will certainly fail to understand that for an Albanian, to belong to the Albanian nation, very often means first of all to have been born and raised by an Albanian-speaking family, with no religion and other conventional mythology involved. To the Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires, instead, the Church represents a sacred place where not only a contact with God is established, but also the essential "grecity" is constantly reproduced. That in Albania there is no religious institution dedicated to the task of establishing ethnic communion -- the role being long since entrusted to the laic school -- makes them believe that the full grecity of Albanian-speaking Orthodox population needs to be fundamentally restored. Therefore a frontal attack is needed, against the Albanian school and aiming at the introduction of Greek (private or Athens-subventioned) schools in Albanian communities, as an efficiency-proven way or readjusting a "fundamentally wrong situation". 7. A comedy of adjectives Moreover, the blind obsession with names and symbols -- the same that led Greek foreign policy to that futile campaign against the name and the national flag of the ex Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia -- has made some of the Vorio-Epirote self-proclaimed leaders retain that even the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti was a Vorio-Epirote ante litteram, since he used to call himself "Epirote". It is well known, instead, that in the Middle Ages the name "Epirote" was employed simply as a prestigious title, whose purpose would be not only to stress the nobility of the bearer by relating him to a glorious (and mostly mythical) past, but also to point out his being essentially different from Greek or Hellenic. Such denominations, as "Epirote" and "Macedonian" were frequently employed, in those times, to design Albanians and Albanian language, thanks to their "antique" resonance, and indisputable cultural prestige. It is absurd to extrapolate and find in them proof of Hellenic descendancy and blood relationship. At that time no one had yet associated Albanians with Illyrians, and the "Epirote" choice seemed quite reasonable, because of geographical and historical resonance, and since it was highly fashionable and almost obligatory to be called with an old classical name. Moreover, various Western European encyclopedic publications during the 16th and 17th centuries continued to call "Illyrian" the Slavic language spoken in Dalmatia, according to a principle of geographic continuity. In fact, in the epistemological context of the epoch, "lingua illyrica" meant simply a language spoken in the territories once inhabited by the Illyrians, which territories very often were identified with the Roman province of Illyricum. It is well known, in addition, that one of the first Renaissance scholars to have shown an interest in Albanian language, the great Italian humanist Joseph Scaliger in 16th century, says of it that it is spoken "in mountains of Epirus". The first Albanian writers, like Budi and Bardhi, while writing in Latin, always called Albanian "lingua epirotica," and the very title of Bardhi's Latin-Albanian vocabulary, "Dictionnarium latino-epiroticum," leaves no doubt about that. 8. Minorities and forgotten minorities One might ask how it is possible that the evident Albanian character of modern southern Albania is being systematically denied by a bunch of visionaries, fanatics, renegades, provocateurs and spies, objectively isolated in their claims, but still successful in seeking and often obtaining the support of public opinion in Greece. In any southern Albanian area you will choose to visit you will find a highly homogeneous, but still tolerant Albanian community, made up of Moslem, Christian Orthodox and agnostic sub-communities, which look at Greece as their natural economic and cultural partner, and which consider the Greek minoritarian presence as a good omen for further expansion of cooperation and friendship. The all too frequent mentioning, by the Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires, of Italy and Turkey, as the two regional powers which traditionally have endorsed the Albanian national cause, and which were mainly responsible for the "dismemberment" of Epirus, betrays these people's true belief that every political development in countries surrounding Greece (maybe even in Greece itself) is fueled by the old controversy between Catholicism (Italy) and Orthodoxy on one side, and Islam (Turkey) and Orthodoxy on the other. In their words, Albania appears therefore to be not only a natural enemy of Greece's historical integrity, but also a simple instrument, or weapon, in the hands of two countries, Italy and Turkey, which have traditionally scared the conservative Greek Orthodox world, as political incarnations of Satan. This ghostly vision finds support, however, in true historical facts, for it is known that Greece has more than once been threatened by these more powerful neighbors. Incidentally, the Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires fail to realize that, in spite of differences, incompatibilities, and misunderstandings, Albania and Greece share most of their recent and less recent history. Both countries today represent centuries of efforts for survival by two ancient Balkan peoples; both have faced the same enemies, the same disgraces, and the same fortunes. This could be, and often has proved to be a good basis for a long-term relation of friendship and complete understanding between the two peoples. >From a historical point of view, the small Greek minority in Albania was probably created when southern Albanian (Moslem) land-owners called for workers for their land-properties in the valley of Drina and other adjacent territories. Its counterparts in Greece, ethnically speaking, are the Arvanites, whose migration to Greece is thought to have taken place through 14th and 16th centuries, and who, along with the ?ams, constitute by far the truly forgotten minority in the region. The analysis of their dialects shows that their place of origin, geographically, is to be found, very probably, south to the territory historically inhabited by the ?ams, i.e., the current ?am?ria in northern Greece. Their existence confirms, again, that the Albanian Tosk territory is the result of a slow RESTRICTION process, not of an expansion, or demographic explosion. Some of the Arvanites have apparently endorsed the worst expression of Greek nationalism, but their dialects speak for them better than transient opportunistic faith. 9. The Himara case As for the so-called "grecity" of Himara -- a small bilingual community on Albanian Ionian coast -- there is strong historical and linguistic evidence of Himariotes being no more than half-grecized Albanians. Because of their geographic isolation, the difficulty of having commerce with Albanian hinterland, and the pressure put on them by the Ottoman administration, they used to look at Greece as their natural protector. Especially Corfu, thanks to its being highly accessible, because of geographic vicinity, became extremely attractive for them, as more and more Himariote families started sending their sons to study in schools on that island, and merchants to trade with the local population. The Greek patois that is currently spoken in Himara and in some other adjacent village seems to be closely related to the Greek dialect spoken in Corfu, and several ethnologists have pointed out how the Himariotes make use of Albanian for special ritualistic purposes. Linguists dealing with the Albanian dialect spoken in Himara, have found in it traces of vocal nasalism, which, along with the use of archaic last names, such as "Gjoleka, Gjipali, Gjidede" (analysable in "Gjon Leka, Gjin Pali, Gjin Deda"), constitute proof for a very old Albanian presence in the area. [See also: Ethnic Legacy in Himara] 10. The myth revealed If it were not for its being absurd, anachronistic, and often ridiculous, the Vorio-Epirote doctrine would have represented the most pernicious attack ever made against the very existence of Albania as a nation, and of Albanians as an ethnic community. Its major threat, however, is now directly related to its emotive impact on an already sensitive Greek public opinion, inside and outside Greece. It can and will gain credibility from the highly preoccupying political instability of Albania. On the other hand, it has profited, and will profit in the future, from a higher international awareness concerning minorities' rights. It might as well be gaining further ground thanks to repeated provocatory attempts, inside Albania, of transposing political controversies into geographic ones, and of associating southern Albania with communism, totalitarism, and anti-democratic subversion. Since its creation, the doctrine has always functioned as a historical and linguistic makeup for the true anachronistic face of Greek ultra-nationalist fanaticism, and their diehard expansionist dreams. By making use of often distorted and even deliberately falsified historical, archeological and linguistic evidence; by employing the obsolete argumentative technique of infinite inclusion, implication and assumption; by the systematic confusion between geography and history; by the methodical mystification of reality and the paranoid refusal to recognize truth; by the manicheistic interpretation of history and foreign relations; by extensively relying on the notorious Greek egocentrism, the Vorio-Epirote doctrinaires have succeeded in including even their own theory in the global myth of Greek racial supremacy in the Balkans. The fact is that they have taken the old and often folkloristic distinction between Greeks and "barbarians" and have overburdened it with racial connotations, though, from a strictly physical anthropologic point of view it is difficult to find a more mixed people the modern Greeks, who -- simply because of the geographic exposure -- include, in their genetic pool, Slavic, Albanian, Turk, Aromanian, Arab and Gypsy elements. Their insisting on the necessity of opening Greek schools and of providing adequate education for the Greek minority in southern Albania can be explained with the special role attributed to Greek language inside the Greek global myth. Greek language, to them, is the sacred weapon by which old Greek supremacy and glory will return to the modern "barbarous" Tosk?ria. This language, especially in its written form, will work like a set of cabalistic formulas capable of awakening the Greek soul still dormant in every "Vorio-Epirote". And since they strongly believe that all these "Albanian speaking Greeks" (this absurd expression is theirs) lost their language because of historical vicissitudes, the proposed schools will be meant to operate like Greek rehabilitation centers, in a to-be-recovered territory. Incidentally, it is even more disturbing the fact that similar attempts are reportedly being made also by some offshoots of Orthodox Church in Albania, with the silent approval of Bishop Janulatos, and in clear contravention with the rules and by-laws of the Albanian Orthodox Church. There is more: the Greek Orthodox church, which has always thought of itself as a body in which the sublunary sacrality of Greek language joins the divine sacrality of pure Christian religion, and which has always tried to bring the gift of the Word -- literally and metaphorically -- to the "barbarians" next door. The true Greek Orthodoxy needs the magic of the letter shapes of the Greek script to come alive, for it lives through the written word, in the written word, and with the written word. Therefore it is not fortuitous that the Vorio-Epirote doctrine has been welcome within the ranks of the Greek Orthodox church, which traditionally professes Orthodoxy not only in religious matters, but in written language matters as well. It is a strange myth, that equally, and ambiguously, adopts ethnic intolerance and love for the next, nationalism and Christianity, proselytism and genocide. Its superb historicism let it absorb everything that has taken place in the past, due to the assumption that -- so far as the Balkans are concerned -- only the elected people, i.e., the Hellenes, have been capable of transforming incidental events into History. There is, objectively, no direct link between problems related to Greek minority in Albania, and the Vorio-Epirote myth. The former are real problems, whose solution might be delayed if the myth gains terrain among Greek minority representatives and associations. The latter is a collection of dreams, fantasies, and deliberate lies, by people willing to use the Greek minority in Albania as a basis for the cancellation of southern Albania from the map. Of course, in so far as the economical gap between Albania and Greece will persist, the Greek minority will always be the focus of irrational disruptive forces, tendencies and impulses. [previously published under a pseudonim in the Albanian newspaper "Illyria", in New York] Table of Contents __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ispaho at bu.edu Mon Feb 28 11:27:10 2000 From: ispaho at bu.edu (Spaho) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 11:27:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE (Special Alert) (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 20:45:41 -0800 From: Carl at shusterman.com To: visalaw at shusterman.com Subject: SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE (Special Alert) CONGRESS HOLDS HEARING REGARDING INS DELAYS On February 25, 2000, Members of Congress Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Sam Farr (D-CA) held a congressional field hearing in San Jose, California regarding chronic delays and mismanagement by the INS. Among those who testified were members of Congress, officials from high-tech employers including Intel and Sun Microsystems, representatives from the American Immigration Lawyers Association and other advocacy organizations, and members of the public. The result was a litany of complaints which included, in the words of the press release "long lines, lost files and poor service", coupled with recommendations for improvements. Representative Lofgren stated that "We have met on a regular basis with Commissioner Doris Meissner to air our frustrations and to find some fair and expeditious way to end this human tragedy. Each of us, individually and jointly, has received reassurances and promises from INS that things were getting better and soon. But they haven't. Instead, they've gotten progressively worse in the five years I've been working on this problem. I am working hard at being patient but my patience has gone unrewarded and now my patience is exhausted. I'm irate about INS's seeming indifference toward our constituents, our staffs, and even ourselves..." "...In an era when FedEx can tell you on-line precisely where your package is, why can't the INS office tell you anything about the status of an application pending with INS for years?" "...In an era when you can secure a home loan and obligate yourself on the World Wide Web for hundreds of thousands of dollars without standing in line, why is it that the best you can do at an INS website is to download some form so you can fill it out by hand, stand in line in the rain, and wait half a decade for an answer?" "...I know that the thousands of employees who work for the INS are frustrated and upset, just as are the people here today. If we can create a system where the work can get done efficiently, everyone will be better off. Our community, our economy, our families and those who are employed in this troubled agency." Read the testimony of all the witnesses at this important hearing at http://shusterman.com/lofgren-pr.html and send your stories, comments and suggestions for improvements to Congresswoman Lofgren at zoe at lofgren.house.gov Carl Shusterman February 27, 2000 From ipilika at wellesley.edu Mon Feb 28 15:51:14 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 15:51:14 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Greek armored infantry company to reinforce KFOR Message-ID: Greek armored infantry company to reinforce KFOR in Mitrovica ATHENS, Feb 27 (AFP) - A light armored infantry company of about 100 Greek soldiers will reinforce NATO-led peacekeepers Monday in the flashpoint town of Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo, army headquarters announced Sunday. Their transfer from Urosevac, south of the Kosovo provincial capital Pristina, is part of a rotation of troops within the Kosovo Force (KFOR) to beef up its presence in the divided northern city, the army said. Mitrovica was the site of deadly clashes about two weeks ago, which pitted ethnic Albanians against KFOR troops who were guarding the town's central bridge across the River Ibar. US forces were pelted with stones and bottles by Serbs after they began searching for weapons in the town's northern neighborhoods. It will be the Greek troops' third mission in the town, as units were posted there January 26-30, and February 15-19 in the midst of the latest unrest. From dardanl at yahoo.com Mon Feb 28 16:07:06 2000 From: dardanl at yahoo.com (Dardan Labeati) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 13:07:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Artikull per Kosoven Lindore Message-ID: <20000228210706.5322.qmail@web3102.mail.yahoo.com> The Guardian (London) February 28, 2000 SECTION: Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 11 LENGTH: 1133 words HEADLINE: Albanian gunmen stir trouble in Serbia; Their own community denounces KLA fighters seeking to provoke a Nato intervention across the border BYLINE: Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane BODY: Jonathan Steele in Gnjilane Armed clashes between ethnic Albanian fighters and Yugoslav forces in the border region between Serbia proper and the province of Kosovo threatens to turn into a new flashpoint and raises the possibility of Nato troops operating inside Serbia. The new trouble spot is the south-western corner of Serbia which is largely populated by Albanians. Former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started to operate in the border villages, carrying guns, wearing paramilitary uniforms and attacking Serb police in an apparent bid to provoke a Serb reaction and Nato help. A Serb policeman died and three others were wounded on Saturday night when Albanian gunmen ambushed a patrol on the main road between Gnjilane and Bujanovac. The attack with automatic rifles and grenades occurred about six kilometres inside Serbia near the village of Konsulj. The police returned fire, killing an Albanian, according to the state-owned news agency, Tanjug. The incident followed explosions in Bujanovac the previous night. Although General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander in Europe, has warned Albanians that Nato does not want to see fighting, United States forces are taking no chances. They have started to build a mini-base right on the border line between Kosovo and Serbia proper, close to the village of Dobrosin, from where tanks and troops in an observation tower look down on the increasingly brazen street forays by guerrillas in broad daylight. Albanian leaders in the Kosovo's main city, Pristina, as well as ordinary people in the region, say they are against cross-border violence for fear of reprisals against the 70,000 Albanians who live in southern Serbia and a new round of ethnic cleansing by Serb security forces. But evidence on the ground suggests that embittered and now demobilised guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army have started armed patrols and military training for local people. In their first interview with journalists at the weekend, local gunmen described what they called 'the little army in uniform which arose among people to defend ourselves'. There was a strange sense of deja vu as we made the encounter, just like two years ago when the world first became aware of the Kosovo Liberation Army itself the whispered contacts, the trail on muddy roads behind a car, the walk on snow-covered fields and through coppices of dwarf oak, and finally the meeting in a village house with a group of half a dozen men with AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles. The difference this time was that instead of the red-and-gold shoulder badge with the Albanian eagle and the letters UCK (the Albanian initials for the KLA), they now wear badges saying UCPMB, the initials of Presevo, Medveda, and Bujenovac. These are three towns in southern Serbia, in the area the guerrillas call 'eastern Kosovo'. Speaking the Swiss dialect of French, their leader, dressed in civilian clothes, said: 'Our soldiers have not come from somewhere else. They are from this village and region. It was part of Kosovo originally, but the borders were changed after the second world war. People here must have the right to decide how and where they want to live.' The UCPMB was formed on January 26, he said, after Serb police entered the village of Dobrosin and killed Isa Saqipi, 31, and his brother Shaip, 35. They were innocently cutting wood, he insisted. 'There have always been incidents but after that January event people began to reflect and organise,' he said. He acknowledged that half of Dobrosin's 2,500 inhabitants had fled across the border to Kosovo. The two broth ers' graves, a mere 200 yards from the barrels of the American tanks on the hill, are covered with wreaths. Dobrosin lies just inside the five-kilometre-deep 'Ground Safety Zone', which the Yugoslav forces accepted when they signed the agreement which ended Nato's bombing last June and authorised the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (K-For). Local Serb police are allowed to operate in the zone, but Yugoslav army troops and special police with heavy weapons are forbidden. Although US forces who control Kosovo's eastern sector send low-flying helicopters along the border line, they respect Serbia's sovereignty by not penetrating the buffer zone. But the ceasefire agreement has a major loophole. Negotiated in a rush as part of the package which put Kosovo under United Nations administration, it said any violation 'would be subject to K-For military action' but did not specify what exactly might trigger a K-For response. 'If atrocities occur in the area, we will go in and take action. We're working on what the definition of an atrocity is,' Major Michael Boehme, information officer Camp Monteith, the US base in Gnjilane, told the Guardian yesterday. The K-For commander, General Klaus Reinhardt, along with Dr Bernard Kouchner, the top UN administrator and the American general in command of the eastern sector, were preparing detailed guidelines, he said.Gary Carrell, an American policeman who commands the UN police in the area, said his staff had held 'preliminary meetings' with the Serbian police on the border in the last few weeks. Albanians cross the border freely and the main aim was to prevent people involved in assassinations of Serbs from slipping away. 'We're pretty sure the suspects in the killing of three Serbs in Kosovo last month were from Presevo,' he said. But the plan for further meetings with the Serb police was vetoed by Jock Covey, the American who is deputy head of the UN administration. The Serb police, known as the MUP, won a fearful reputation among Albanians during last year's expulsions and killings. It is hard to gauge what support the UCPMB has. Hundreds of people from the region have fled to Kosovo in recent weeks because of stepped-up Serb police action and alleged intimidation. An inhabitant of Bujenovac, who has brought his family to Kosovo, said he spoke for many when he denounced the UCPMB. But he insisted on anonymity. 'In Presevo it is not so bad, since the population is 95% Albanian. In Bujenovac where the Serbs are 40% it is much tougher for Albanians, ' he said. Yugoslav officials agree that violence in the region is growing. General Vladimir Lazarevic, the commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, told a Belgrade newspaper recently that 'the adverse political and security situation in Kosovo is spreading to municipalities bordering Kosovo'. But he rejected the notion that Albanians leaving the area for Kosovo were refugees. 'This is a plan aimed at convincing the world that Serbia is expelling Albanians. ' He added that K-For wanted to provide a pretext for more drastic measures, diplomatic, political, and perhaps military. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com From ipilika at wellesley.edu Mon Feb 28 21:22:19 2000 From: ipilika at wellesley.edu (Iris Pilika) Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 21:22:19 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Albania official fired, possible link to document leak Message-ID: Albania official fired, possible link to document leak Sunday, 27 February 2000 22:42 (ET) Albania official fired, possible link to document leak TIRANA, Albania, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The Albanian deputy foreign minister was ousted, a move analysts said is linked to the recent publication of documents alleged to be minutes of a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Albanian President Rex Meidani. Ben Blushi was discharged Saturday for what the government termed "abuse of office." No further explanation was given. Blushi's dismissal followed the publication of the purported minutes in the Albanian independent daily Koha Jone. The paper printed that Albright allegedly had spoken of meeting with Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim Thaci, and had promised to talk with U.N. Administrator Bernard Kouchner about opening an Albanian communications mission in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. "This great error can destroy what we have done in two years," said Foreign Minister Paskal Milo. Albanian journalist D. Kola said that the government is concerned that the incident will damage U.S.-Albanian relations. A State Department spokesman Sunday had no comment, other than to confirm Albright had been in Tirana last weekend and that scheduled meetings had gone well. Dismissal of officials in other countries was an internal matter, he said. -- Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved. -- From aalibali at law.harvard.edu Tue Feb 29 22:00:21 2000 From: aalibali at law.harvard.edu (aalibali at law.harvard.edu) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:00:21 -0500 Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Event in London Message-ID: From: Dejan Djokic UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON School of Slavonic and East European Studies POST-KOSOVO BALKANS: PERSPECTIVES ON RECONCILIATION Workshop organized by Centre for South East European Studies (CSEES) and Nash Albanian Studies Programme A one-day workshop on reconciliation in the Balkans is to be held at School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL, on 18 March 2000. The participants will address the issue of reconciliation from a perspective of political theory, anthropology and history. The aim of the workshop is to present relevant current research and to address following questions: What is reconciliation? Can and should theories of reconciliation developed in relation to other conflict and post-conflict areas (eg. Northern Ireland, South Africa) be applied to the Balkans? Is reconciliation in the Balkans possible and how to achieve it? For more details contact the convenors: Dejan Djokic, PhD candidate and History Tutor, SSEES/UCL (d.djokic at ssees.ac.uk) or Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, Alex Nash Teaching Fellow in Albanian Studies, SSEES/UCL (sschwand at ssees.ac.uk). Programme UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON SCHOOL OF SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES POST-KOSOVO BALKANS: PERSPECTIVES ON RECONCILIATION Workshop organized by Centre for South East European Studies and Nash Albanian Studies Programme Saturday, 18 March 2000, 9:00-17:00 Room 336, SSEES, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU 9:00 Registration 9:30 Welcome by Michael Branch, Director, SSEES 9:35 Introduction by Wendy Bracewell, Director, CSEES Session One: Theoretical perspectives (chair: Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers) 9:45 Mari Fitzduff (INCORE, University of Ulster) The Challenges Beyond Violence: Reflections on the Study of Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation 10:30 Coffee/Tea break Session Two: Historical perspectives (chair: Wendy Bracewell) 10:45 Renee Hirschon (Oxford) History, Myth and the Nation State: Reviving Lost Anatolian Voices Peter Siani-Davies (SSEES/UCL) Civil War and Reconciliation in Greece Dejan Djokic (SSEES/UCL) The Second World War II: Reconciliation Among Serbs and Croats and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia 13:00 Lunch break Session Three: Current perspectives (chair: Dejan Djokic) 14:00 Cynthia Cockburn (City University, London) Women's Organizations in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina: Issues of Democracy Joanna Hanson (FCO) and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (SSEES/UCL) The Impact of the Kosovo Crisis on Albanian Mutual Perceptions 15:30 Coffee/Tea break 15:45 Radovan Haluzik (Charles University, Prague and SSEES/UCL) Narratives of Hatred and of Reconciliation in Kosovo Gerlachus Duijzings (SSEES/UCL) New Myths are Needed: Reconciliation in Kosovo as an Intellectual Challenge Final discussion 17:00 Wine RSVP to convenors: Dejan Djokic (d.djokic at ssees.ac.uk) and Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (sschwand at ssees.ac.uk) Admission: #10. Free to SSEES students and staff, paid-up members of South East European Studies Association. Other students, OAP, UB40: #5. From aalibali at yahoo.com Tue Feb 29 19:42:27 2000 From: aalibali at yahoo.com (Agron Alibali) Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 16:42:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ALBSA-Info] Irish Times Message-ID: <20000301004227.11112.qmail@web109.yahoomail.com> The Irish Times February 29, 2000 Pg. 11 War crimes court warns against Milosevic deal Reuters) It would be "absolutely outrageous" for any country to offer refuge to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the deputy prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has said. Mr Graham Blewitt said giving shelter to Mr Milosevic would be a breach of international law. The tribunal has issued an international arrest warrant for the Yugoslav president and four accused Yugoslav and Serbian officials. Greek media had reported that China has offered refuge to the Yugoslav leader. Earlier Greek media claimed that the US was looking for a place of refuge for Mr Milosevic. Both countries are permanent members of the Security Council, the parent body of the tribunal. Mr Blewitt was speaking as four Bosnian Serbs went on trial accused of torturing and murdering Muslim and Croat civilians at prison camps during the Bosnian war. The four, Mr Miroslav Kvocka (43), Mr Milojica Kos (36), Mr Mlado Radic (47) and Mr Zoran Zigic are together charged with 17 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for atrocities committed in three prison camps in the Prijedor region of northwestern Bosnia during the spring and summer of 1992. "The evidence presented at this trial will prove that the accused and others under their authority confined, beat, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered many of the Bosnian and Croat detainees ... solely because of the victims' ethnicity," a prosecutor, Mr Grant Niemann, said in an opening statement. He showed the court video clips of emaciated detainees at the Omarska camp, a former mining complex. "The images of skeletal malnutrition at the Prijedor prison camps sent shock waves around the world," Mr Niemann said. Three of the accused were commanders at the Omarska camp. Mr Kvocka served as overall commander and later as deputy commander while Mr Kos and Mr Radic were shift commanders at the camp. Mr Zigic entered the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps to rape, torture and kill prisoners, prosecutors allege. The indictment picks out one instance where Mr Zigic severely beat two men over a period of days, then forced them to jump from a truck, lie on broken glass and have sex with other prisoners. The two victims died several days later. Mr Niemann said the acts of cruelty were not random. "This trial is about a government policy of persecution and ethnic cleansing. The crime was on a massive scale," he said. A handful of "ethnocentric, fanatical nationalists" seized power in Prijedor, regarded as a strategic corridor, and sought to permanently remove, or "ethnically cleanse", Muslims and Croats in order to forge a Serb nation, Mr Niemann said. About 6,000 civilians were rounded up and held in the camps. "At a minimum, hundreds of prisoners, whose identities are known and unknown, did not survive the camps," the indictment says. By June 1993, the Muslim population of about 49,000 had been reduced to an estimated 6,000, prosecutors say. President Jacques Chirac of France will visit the tribunal today and meet the president, chief prosecutor and registrar. France has agreed to put its prisons at the disposal of the tribunal. It is the sixth country where convicted war criminals will be able to serve their sentences. Italy, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Austria have also made such a commitment. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com