[ALBSA-Info] Sunday Telegraph

[Agron Alibali]

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) 


March 25, 2001, Sunday 

Pg. 29 

Rebels fight for creation of a Greater Kosovo state 

BY ASKOLD KRUSHELNYCKY in Selce AND PHILIP SHERWELL in
Tetovo 


ETHNIC ALBANIAN rebels who have brought Macedonia to
the brink of another savage Balkan war aim to achieve
independence for neighbouring Kosovo, eventually
carving off Albanian-populated areas of Macedonia to
form a de facto Greater Kosovo, The Sunday Telegraph
has learned. 

The guerrillas of the National Liberation Army, who
are battling Macedonian forces around the city of
Tetovo, have publicly insisted that they are fighting
to secure equal rights for the country's Muslim
Albanian minority. 

A Sunday Telegraph investigation has discovered
intricate links between powerful Albanian clans in
Macedonia and Kosovo. The clans that launched the
rebellion in Kosovo are now behind the insurgency in
Macedonia. 

Emrush Xhemali, the former security chief of the
Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, is
masterminding the rebel campaign around Tetovo, a
guerrilla commander disclosed last week. 

The Albanian ultra-nationalists will eventually offer
peace in Macedonia as the price for international
recognition of an independent Kosovo, according to a
Western intelligence agency that has been tracing clan
links between the Balkans and central Europe. 

Although the West is resolutely opposed to redrawing
of borders in the Balkans, Albanian radicals are
hoping to force through independence for Kosovo as the
only alternative to another war. While the strategy
has little hope of success, it is fuelling the
conflict. 

Cannon and machinegun fire rang out around Tetovo
yesterday, but the ill-equipped 11,000-strong
Macedonian army is wary of launching an all-out
offensive against the NLA fighters who control several
villages in the surrounding hills. 

There seemed little hope of an immediate end to the
crisis as NLA leaders vowed to continue their
rebellion, despite widespread condemnation of their
"terrorist" activities. The EU gave strong backing to
Macedonia at the Stockholm summit, while President
Bush later assailed the Albanian extremists. 

Albanian emigres committed to Kosovan independence
have been raising money, recruits and guns for years
for the rebels in Switzerland, Germany and North
America. The ultra-nationalists' Swiss-based leader,
Fazli Veliu, has close family ties to Ali 

Ahmeti, the political representative of the Macedonian
insurgents and a KLA founder. 

The two men, both from the Macedonian village of
Zajas, also have close links with Mr Thaci and the
powerful Jashari clan who spearheaded the KLA's early
operations before most were wiped out in a Serbian
offensive in spring 1998. 

NLA commanders based in 

Tetovo's mountainous hinterland dismissed claims by
Western officials that their movement was a young one
of only a few hundred ill-prepared fighters. Instead,
they described the insurgency as an operation
carefully planned over several years. 

Most of the rebels are ethnic Albanians from northern
and western Macedonia whose commanders learned their
battlefield tactics fighting for the KLA two years
ago. Official boundaries, however, mean little in a
part of the world dominated by clan loyalties and
blood ties. In the long run, the rebels hope to create
a Greater Kosovo with the de facto secession of the
predominantly Albanian northern and western regions of
Macedonia. Fellow Albanian rebels in southern Serbia's
Presevo Valley harbour similar dreams. 

Talk of Greater Albania, by contrast, has dwindled
among the Albanians of Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia.
Many spent time in Albania proper for the first time
as refugees in 1999 and were shocked to discover how
backward and impoverished the "mother country" had
been left by xenophobic communist rulers of the past. 

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