[NYC-L] Macedonian web site.........

[Imer Berisha]

Dear friends,
I have sent the following text to: Prof. Micgiel, Brad Joseph and mailed to 
<othereurope at columbia.edu

*************************************************************************

Original message sent by Brad Joseph:
_______________________________________________________
Dear Professor Micgiel:

The President of Macedonia, Boris Trajkovski, announces the opening of his 
bi-lingual web site. The web site will promote two-way communication between 
the public, journalist, scholars and leading decision makers. If you have 
any specific questions or need to be informed about the latest development 
in Macedonia, please access www.president.gov.mk .


Brad Joseph
________________________________________________________


Dear Prof. Micgiel and others,

As I come across this information about the web site of the Macedonian 
President, I had some doubts about it and visited the site.

I have to say, unfortunately my doubts were justified.

The web site is only in Macedonian an English.

What about Albanian language and the need of Macedonian President to 
communicate with Albanian people in Macedonia.  Or seems to me that 
Macedonian President is more interested to sell his story to the media than 
to tackle issues that have been neglected for decades. There was and there 
is still great unhappiness and deep dissatisfaction of Albanians in 
Macedonia and this is one of the reasons why there are Macedonian Albanians 
(not from Kosova) fighting in the hills of Macedonia.

The guerillas agenda is the same as of Albanian Political Parties in 
Macedonia that achieved nothing during endless negotiations within 
Macedonian official political structure in the last decade.


As a Professor you would understand the importance of the education and in 
this respect of the University.

This people on the hills are fighting for the University in Albanian 
language to be recognized. They have other demands that can be summarized as 
asking for equality within Macedonia.

They have stated they accept the Sovereignty of Macedonia and want to be a 
part of it.

Albanians in Macedonia are between 30 and 40%
(no precise figure is accepted by either side as there were manipulations 
reported during the census).

NLA National Liberation Army has demanded a census to be carried out
under the supervision of an international body.

All this demands are very well known to Macedonian Government but they were 
never accepted when brought forward by Albanian Political Parties.

Of course I do not support the violence.
I just want to point to the discrimination that went on for so long in 
Macedonia as a fertile ground for unhappy people that will choose to fight 
among other things, for the right to education.

For Macedonian President to launch a web site only in Macedonian and English 
I don't think is a great achievement.

It is only one more fact of Macedonia's stance not to allow Albanians to 
participate equally in running the country and to deny them their civic 
rights.

If the above mentioned problems are solved by negotiating with Albanian 
representatives, Macedonia has nothing to fear for its future. Otherwise I 
believe that ignoring the situation and pretending that everything was fine 
for last 50 years, will just draw more Albanians in Macedonia on the 
rebel(NLA) side and this could than become a real danger for all in the 
region but first for Macedonia.

Imer Berisha
Cleveland
Ohio





_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.