German Institute presents 3 Kosovo outcomes

September 26, 2007

German Institute for International Politics and Security has presented a paper that outlines 3 possible scenarios for Kosovo after the December 10 negotiations deadline.
First is a confederation scenario in which an independent Kosovo would form a a confederate union with Serbia under a working title "United Independent States of Serbia and Kosovo". In this variant, Kosovo Albanians who have seized power in the province would declare independence but immediately join this Union.
Second possibility is an independence recognition by Belgrade and Russia after initial anger dissipates in these respective centers.
The third scenario, termed as "blacK" by the German Institute sees a possibility of a Kosovo Albanian unilateral declaration of independence that is backed by Washington which would trigger a pullout by the UN peace keepers out of Kosovo and a division of the province. The institute also sees a possibility that this scenario would bring Serbian radicals to power in Belgrade and an escalation of violence in the region.

"Tom Ridge accuse for corruption in Albania?"

Photo:' Tom Ridge

Former Home Land Security Director of USA, under accuse: The albanian Government has payed his company "Ridge Global Llc" with about $ 500 thousand, from albanian public finances, said the albanian press.

For about one year, Tom Ridge has been payed from Albanian Government under a "secret contrate" for "National Security Issue of Albania" as special consilier of Prime Minister Sali Berisha with about $ 40 thousand in month.

But the Superior Control Administrate of the Albanian State has explored the "misterios contrate" with US private leader company Tom Ridge, accusing premier Berisha "to be not cleare" with public finances of albanian people.

In fact the Strategic Security of Albania has been aproved from Albanian Parliament and the contrat for one year with Ridge Global Llc" has been in any abusive form".

Some months ago Former NATO General Wesley Clark had a meeting with premier Berisha to promove his private company in Albania.
related link: http://www.balkanweb.com/

The Albanian tribunals continue to give land and properties to Albanians

State Departament
Daily Press Briefing Tom Casey, Deputy SpokesmanWashington,

Albanian Tribunal and Government to conquist greek minority lands and proprioties.

Photo: Deputy Spokesman Thomas Casey
 

DCSeptember 27, 2007INDEX:

MR. CASEY: Mr. Lambros Papantoniou.
QUESTION: On Albania.
MR. CASEY: On Albania. Okay.

 

QUESTION: Albania's intentions today in Northern Epirus, the Albanian tribunals continue to give land and properties to Albanians (inaudible) the Greek minority. And a lot of protests have taken place today in the Greek town of Himara (ph). Since the Albanian Government, Mr. Casey, started a new (inaudible) campaign against the Greeks in Northern Epirus, I'm wondering if you have any comment, in the framework of human rights, for who is the U.S. Government is very concerned.

MR. CASEY: Mr. Lambros, I'm not familiar with the specific incident you're referring to. What I would say is, of course, in any actions that the Government of Albania takes or any government takes, we would expect that those actions would follow the laws of that country, follow established norms and procedures and certainly be in accordance with the constitution. I haven't read the Albanian constitution recently. But as I recall, it does provide a general and good guarantee for basic human rights.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) another question. So it is a matter of our relation of human rights and that's why I'm asking you.

MR. CASEY: Well, again, Mr. Lambros, if your question concerns decisions rendered over the distribution of property in towns in Albania, I don't have anything specific for you on that. But what I would tell you is we would expect that any decisions made, whether by an executive body or by a court system, would follow the rule of law and the established laws of the country.

QUESTION: Thank you, (inaudible) to that specifically, but --

MR. CASEY: If you want, Mr. Lambros, I'm sure our friends in the European Bureau could answer you about that or perhaps the Embassy as well. But I think I would leave it to the Albanian Government to describe their actions. If there was anything -- there are any concerns that are raised by that I'm sure you'll hear from our folks in the appropriate time.

related link: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/sep/92916.htm

Italy Backs Albania's Nato Accession but with Greece is waiting to.....

Photo: Berisha and Shefer

27 09 2007, Tirana, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has given his strong backing to Albania’s aspiration to join NATO at a meeting with his Albanian counterpart on Wednesday.
Prodi expressed his appreciation for Tirana’s policy on organized crime and corruption, and encouraged Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha to push through reforms required for his country’s integration into the EU.

After the meeting Berisha declared that he was pleased with the support he had received from Prodi at their meeting in New York.

“The Italian Prime Minister assured me of his country’s active support for Albania’s integration into NATO”, he said, according to a press release from his office.

Albania is hoping to receive a formal invitation from next year's NATO summit in Bucharest to join the Alliance.

On Thursday he took part in the opening of the world leaders’ summit organized in view of the “Clinton Global Initiative,” which aims to tackle major challenges through active engagement in fields like energy, education and climate change.

Annyway Albania, would have next months a strong opposition Greece for it aspiration to NATO, which is waiting from Tirana to complet the politicaly and civil rigths reforms particularly the politicaly requets of Greek Ethnic Minority which is passed a dangerous period last years. The New Greek Parliament is waiting to ratifice tow agreements with Albania, one to join Albania to NATO next Summit of Bucarest in 2008 and seconde to help Albania to acces Association Stabilisation Proces with European Union.

Athens has expresed his decision to make veto against any position of FYROM to join to NATO Alliance, if Skopie does not change it direction for the name of Macedonia.

Raising tension in Southern Albania. The Albanian Tribunals continue to give lands and proprieties to Albanians with any abusive form against Greek Ethnic Community in Northern Epirus.

People of Himara in protest blocking the National Road from Vlora to Saranda, while in Dropulli another Tribunal has know as proprietor an anonymous person. The beginging new genocide aganist greeks in albania. Photo: Himara`s beatch

Northern Epirus News, September 26, 2007

Thousand of people from Himara Region, have blocked the national road from Vlora to Saranda, raising the protest against the Albanian Government. A decision of Tribunal of Vlora has gave proprieties to an anonymous person with about 600 hectar, in the places known as “Porto Panoramo (Palermo)” an old name of Marine Naval Base of Albania, 5 km from Himara Town. According to Albanian press the demonstrations has been united in Porto Palermo, protesting against the Albanian Government, which is responsible of the dangerous situation against proprieties of Greek Ethnic Community of Himara People. The Tribunals of Albania continue to give territories of greek people who live in Northern Epirus to unknown personages.

But working without any transparence with greek minority, the Albanian Government, Tribunals, Prosecutors and Cadastres are falsifying historically proprieties document which understanding as new very dangerous tension between Greek ethnic community and Albanian State. According to information, Mafia of Kosovo, that passed the holydays in Ionian Coast Line, “where interested to bay lands and proprieties” of Greek ethnic Community in Northern Epirus from Vlora to Saranda Region.

But not only Himara People is in target of Albanian mafia to assimilisation ethnicaly process, but also the Drinopouli Region have been another target of “abusive Tribunal decisions”. Hundred of Greek Community peoples has been shocked when lands of Pogoni Village, the Tribunal of Argirokaster has taken an anonymous person from Tirana, with about half of total territory of Greek Community of Pogoni.

The Kosovo nationalists have installed in Saranda Town the politic leader of UCK Adem Demaci, who makes opened anti Hellenic rhetoric often starting in Albanian press his goals against Greek Minority and threating the Hellenic National Security. Last interview of Adem Demaci was in BBC Radio Albanian Section which called the Chamuria Issue as a priority of Albanian nationalism after Kosovo Solution.

Related article see analysis ...June/ 2007,
"ALBANIA: IONIAN COAST, GREEK POPULATION AND THE JALI'S BEACH PROJECT"

IMF Backs Albania-Kosovo Highway
BIRN Agency, 25 09 2007 Tirana_ The International Monetary Fund has endorsed a controversial highway project, currently under construction, which will link the Albanian coast with Kosovo.
“We are monitoring the budget and large capital investments, like the Durres-Kukes highway. Though their cost is high, we are in favour of this project”, said Gerein Bell, head of the IMF mission, on Tuesday.

The project is the largest public works scheme in Albania’s recent history, and is being financed through commercial loans.However, the prosecutor-general’s office has been investigating possible irregularities in the tender for the construction of the highway.

Prosecutors have already questioned the former deputy Minister of Transport, Armand Teliti, and are seeking a similar meeting with the former Minister of Transport, Lulzim Basha, now the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Basha has refused to cooperate with prosecutors, and has said the charges against him are politically motivated.

Bell dismissed fears that the energy crisis that has hit Albania through frequent power cuts will substantially reduce economic growth.

“Trembles from outside factors have not affected economic growth until now, but they have raised inflationary pressures. The performance of exports has been better than expected; the same can be said about tourism, which has helped compensate for the negative effects of the energy crisis,” she said.
According to the Finance Ministry, last year’s power cuts cost Albania one per cent of its GDP growth in 2006.

Kosovo: Recognition Likely From U.S.

By JUDY DEMPSEY
Published: September 25, 2007
BERLIN, Sept. 24 — The United States and most of the European Union will recognize Kosovo if the Balkan province declares independence from Serbia in early December, when last-ditch negotiations end, United States and European officials said Monday.
The officials spoke as Serbian and Kosovo Albanian diplomats prepared to sit down this week at the United Nations for talks billed as part of a final effort to get agreement on the issue of Kosovo’s independence. Its future status has fueled a confrontation between the West and Russia, which has threatened to veto any Security Council resolution approving independence for Kosovo.
“The game plan is set,” said a senior European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
The talks end on Dec. 10. “If there is no sense then that Serbia and Kosovo can agree on the province’s future, then Kosovo will make a unilateral declaration of independence,” he said, adding that “the U.S. will recognize that independence and the Europeans, as far as they can remain united, will follow too.”
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Reuters: “There’s going to be an independent Kosovo. It’s the only solution that is potentially stabilizing for the Balkans rather than destabilizing for the Balkans.”
Illustrating the thorniness of the issue for European nations, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in an interview last week that Europe must stay united on Kosovo, but that Russia’s position must be taken into account as well.
“Kosovo’s independence is unavoidable in the long term,” he said, adding that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, “must understand that no one wants to humiliate him.”
Among European countries, analysts said Greece and Cyprus could break ranks with Washington and Brussels. Greece, a close ally of Serbia, is concerned that its neighbor Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic, could become unstable if its ethnic Albanians agitate for independence.
Cyprus, divided between the Turkish north and the Greek Cypriot south, fears the Kosovo example might be used by Turkish Cypriots.
With so much at stake for European unity, diplomats said all efforts would be made this week at the United Nations to press leaders from Kosovo and Serbia to reach an agreement. The issue is one of the last unresolved disputes left from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
“I think it is best that we work through the United Nations Security Council,” said Ivan Vejvoda, director of the Belgrade office for the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It would ensure full solidarity and democratic legitimacy in the region.”
While the European Union has been seeking an end to the impasse through the United Nations, it has begun losing patience with the struggle to find a consensus in the Security Council, according to European diplomats.
Mr. Putin, who wants the issue kept inside the United Nations, has opposed independence. Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, can veto or block any resolution calling for Kosovo to be independent.
European and American diplomats said the status of Kosovo could not be left in limbo indefinitely. Since 1999, when NATO bombed Serbian targets to stop the killing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the province of two million people has been under a United Nations-led international protectorate.
Wanting to end this precarious status, the United Nations last year appointed a former president of Finland, Marti Ahtisaari, to draw up a plan in which Serbs in the province would be granted a wide degree of political and cultural autonomy once Kosovo was independent from Serbia.
The European Union agreed to closely monitor the implementation of the Ahtisaari plan by replacing the United Nations protectorate there with a strong police and judicial system in which European officials would supervise Kosovo’s independence for a certain period. NATO, which has 17,000 soldiers deployed in the province, would remain.
While the Kosovo leadership overwhelmingly accepted the Ahtisaari plan, Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, and Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, openly rejected it, saying they would never agree to Kosovo’s independence. Russia insisted on giving the diplomatic track another chance, which the United States and European Union accepted, but with the condition that the talks last no more than 120 days.
The Europeans appointed Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to London, to lead three envoys that includes Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko of Russia and Frank G. Wisner of the United States.
Separately, a bomb exploded in a popular area of Pristina on Monday, killing two people and wounding dozens, United Nations officials said.
The blast took place just after 2 a. m. on Bill Clinton Boulevard, shaking the city center.
The police and United Nations officials said the bombing appeared to be part of criminal dispute.
“As far as we know it’s not politically related,” said Alexander Ivanko, the chief spokesman for the United Nations mission that administers Kosovo.
Nicholas Wood contributed reporting from Ljubljana, Slovenia

FYROM hails Canadian move on name recognition

AP, September 23, 2007 2:26 PM
SKOPJE, Macedonia-Macedonia's prime minister said Thursday Canada has recognized his small Balkan state under the name Republic of Macedonia, despite objections from neighboring Greece.
Nikola Gruevski said the Canadian move was "excellent news," for Macedonia, which has a long-running dispute over its name with Greece.
"We have been informed by our embassy that Canada has recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name," Gruevski told Macedonian state radio. "This is excellent news for us and we welcome this move."
Canadian officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Greece insists on calling its neighbor the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM, arguing that Macedonia alone implies territorial claims on the northern Greek province of the same name.
Athens said Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis would complain to her Canadian counterpart later Thursday.
"We are not happy with this decision," Foreign Ministry spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos said. "It is only natural that the hundreds of thousands of Greeks living in Canada will also be displeased with this decision."
Koumoutsakos said Canada would only use the name Macedonia in its bilateral relations, sticking to FYROM in all international bodies.
A total of 117 countries, including the U.S., have recognized the country as the Republic of Macedonia.
Macedonia gained peaceful independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, and was admitted to the United Nations under the provisional name "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia."