[ALBSA-Info] Keep Balkan borders, says Bulgaria president

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

Keep Balkan borders, says Bulgaria president

SOFIA, March 31 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's President Petar Stoyanov said on 
Saturday that recasting Balkan borders along ethnic lines would be disastrous 
for the volatile region. 

"Redrawing borders in the Balkans in search of an identity for newly formed 
states based on ethnic or religious homogeneity threatens to destroy the very 
foundation of European civilisation," Stoyanov told a conference in Sofia. 

His comments came after respected Balkans watchdog the International Crisis 
Group said this week that the West should stop trying to prevent the break-up 
of what remains of the former Yugoslavia. 

Western powers have tried to stop Serbia's small sister republic Montenegro 
from pursuing plans to hold a referendum on independence. 

They fear the break-up of federal Yugoslavia could fuel ethnic violence and 
trigger demands for more border changes in the region where a large ethnic 
Albanian community straddles several internal and international frontiers. 

Stoyanov said ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia had a right to live under a 
democratic system. 

"But regrettably it seems that they see only one possibility to turn this 
desire into reality -- not within the framework of the state of Yugoslavia 
but within the framework of some other independent state such as Kosovo," he 
said. 

"We must face the reality that not a single Kosovo Albanian party in 
Yugoslavia professes any other philosophy but this one," Stoyanov told the 
conference on civil societies in southeastern Europe. 

He said the West should support promotion of civil societies in the Balkans 
to foster ethnic tolerance and help the region shed its image as Europe's 
troublespot. 

Bulgaria suffered economic losses but remained untouched during a decade of 
wars accompanying the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. It allowed NATO to 
use its airspace during the 1999 bombing of Yugoslav forces, which drove them 
out of Kosovo. 

But concern has been raised in Bulgaria by the recent fighting between 
neighbouring Macedonia and ethnic Albanian guerrillas along the Ma
cedonia-Kosovo border.