10:05
2001-07-03
UCK, the Albanian extremist organization, has one objective – war. Protected by NATO and the EU, this organization manages to reach all of its objectives, one by one.
The commanders of the UCK (Ushtria Clirimtare e Kombatere in Albanian, Fighting Force for Liberation) are not motivated by religious or political reasons. Their sole aim is to gain control of the lucrative trafficking chains, be this traffic in arms, drugs or people.
The only way they can maintain their power is through active combat and for this, they need an enemy. Now that the situation in Kosovo is calm, if not resolved definitively, and the Albanians were forced to lay down arms in Presevo, southern Serbia, Macedonia is the next victim of this movement, which knows how to divide and take advantage of the division it creates.
Firstly, the UCK managed to negotiate directly with NATO in its withdrawal from Aracinovo, thus becoming a recognised negotiating force in the international community.
Secondly, the Slavic mutiny last week, with the occupation of the Macedonian parliament and calls for arms by the Slavic Macedonians was another sign that the Albanians are winning the pre-war period – they have created an enemy to fight.
The tensions between the two communities does nothing but aid and abet the Albanian cause.
This cause is misunderstood in the international press. Pravda.Ru has already reported that the Albanians enjoy a large degree of cultural and political autonomy in Macedonia and claims that they do not have organisms to practise their own language or their own schools are simply not true. They have their own schools, their own university is being created, they have their own cultural institutions and their own representatives in government. Claims that they are discriminated against professionally are nonsense, since they have preference for many job applications and in places on courses because they are an ethnic minority.
The international community has been powerless to neutralise the UCK bases in Kosovo because it did not want to. The UCK have now hijacked the Albanian political parties in Skopje, turning a political situation into a military one.
The next move will be an attempt to create a rupture in the national unity government, composed of two Slavic and two Albanian political parties. How much longer NATO and the European Union are prepared to tolerate the existence of a violent and armed group dictating their wishes remains to be seen.
If war were to break out in Macedonia, and one sincerely hopes that it does not, even though it would make a nice story for the international media, it would be an extremely dangerous flashpoint which could see the whole region flaring up. It is the responsibility of NATO to stop what it started, acting in such a way as to convince everyone that it was seriously opposed to a war in the Balkans. Until now, NATO has convinced nobody.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
PRAVDA.Ru
LISBON PORTUGAL
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/07/03/9187.html
10:05 2001-07-03
Miroslav Antic,
http://www.antic.org/
