Kosova Daily Report #1342, 98-02-10

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From: Kosova Information Center <kic_pr@zana-pr.ztn.apc.org>

Kosova Information Center

KOSOVA DAILY REPORT #1342

Prishtina, 10 February 1998

CONTENTS

[01] President Rugova Receives German Ambassador

[02] President Rugova Receives Austrian Ambassador

[03] Autonomy for Kosova Is an Overdue Solution, According to Alois Mock

[04] Nano Rhetoric, Music to the Ears of Milosevic

[05] Serbian Police Shot at 20-year-old Albanian in Downtown Sk&nderaj

[06] Ever Increasing Number of Albanians Tortured in Kijeva and Komaran

[07] Repression Chronicle

[01] President Rugova Receives German Ambassador

The current situation in Kosova and the prospects for a peaceful settlement to the Kosova issue were discussed at length.

President Rugova said the situation in Kosova has been deteriorating amidst an increasing Serbian campaign of violence and provocations against the Albanian population, especially in central Kosova, where huge Serb forces have been deployed in the recent time.

Dr. Ibrahim Rugova emphasized that the people of Kosova is committed to pursue its political will for independence by peaceful and political means.

President Rugova and the German ambassador discussed also the coming elections in Kosova, scheduled for March 22, as well as the prospects for the implementation of the Education Accord, signed by Rugova and then Serbian President Milosevic in 1996.

The Kosova President recalled that the Albanian side has always been willing to implement the Education Accord in full, but that it was the Serbian side which has been adopting an utterly obstructionist approach and blocking its implementation.

The Contact Group and the EU have been making efforts to finally put the Education Agreement into life, as a first step to establish confidence and encourage dialogue, Ambassador Wilfried Grber said.

The Ambassador said the German government followed the situation in Kosova closely and expressed its support for a peaceful settlement to the Kosova issue.

[02] President Rugova Receives Austrian Ambassador

The President and the new Austrian ambassador exchanged views about the current developments in Kosova as well as the prospects for a negotiated settlement to the crisis.

Dr. Ibrahim Rugova recalled that Kosova was one of the eight equitable units of the now defunct Yugoslav federation. Kosova had the right to choose which way to take, and it did, he said, adding that in a national referendum the people of Kosova opted for independence of their country.

A democratic infrastructure has been built up and maintained, President Ibrahim Rugova said, adding that the coming presidential and parliamentary elections will re-legitimize this democratic order.

The people of Kosova have been committed to pursue their aspirations by utterly democratic and peaceful means, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova said. An independent Kosova would accommodate the entire region in this part of the world, he said. "All would benefit from such an arrangement", as well as stability in the region.

Touching upon the current repressive reality in Kosova, President Rugova said the situation has been deteriorating amidst an increasing Serbian campaign of violence and provocations against the Albanian population, especially in central Kosova, where huge Serb forces have been deployed in the recent time. Not only Serb police and military troops, but also local Serb population has been provoking the Albanians and a possible conflict break-out, the President said.

Ambassador Petrisch said Austria has been following the developments in Kosova closely. The Austrian government is supportive of a peaceful settlement to the Kosova issue, he concluded.

[03] Autonomy for Kosova Is an Overdue Solution, According to Alois Mock

Alois Mock called for an international conference on Kosova, and said the Kosova issue may only be resolved with something "between autonomy and independence" which would guarantee the development of Kosova and prospects for a lasting settlement.

[04] Nano Rhetoric, Music to the Ears of Milosevic

If truly uttered, and there is hardly any reason to doubt it, this is the first time the two million Albanians of Kosova will have heard the outrageous 'parallel institutions' terminology employed by an Albanian leader. This should be, however, ear to the music of Slobodan Milosevic and his henchmen, of Vuk Draskovic, Vojisalv Seselj, and other opposition leaders who have made a common cause against Albanians and Kosova, and have been all along dubbing the mainstream Kosova institutions 'parallel', that is underground, illegal.

In the language employed by Albanian Communist-turned-Socialist leader, the phrase 'parallel institutions' stands for what the people of Kosova recognize as their own mainstream institutional system, a network of civic, political and state institutions built up and maintained democratically, by consent and through the exercise of their free will. Not coercively and through direct domination, like the Serbian occupation authorities implanted here.

Let us quote further Prime Minister Nano's words - referring to his spokesman' remarks reported in the Albanian media - so as to taste the full flavour of his bizarre verbal and political stew.

"The Albanians in and outside Albania should understand that parallel institutions are no solution; on the contrary, they only radicalize the societies that have created them", Fatos Nano is quoted to have said, adding that "these tendencies stir radical actions, and as we are witnessing, even terrorist ones, actions which the Albanian government does not support, irrespective of whether Albanians or Serbs are behind them".

While the Enter news agency only carries the remarks, the Koha jon& newspaper calls them "courageous" initiatives, because "to this day, no one has dared dispute these institutions, which, by excluding Albanians from developments in the country they live in, have only served the interests of others".

Thus, Prime Minister Fatos Nano of Albania finds in Koha jon& an outlet to tell the Kosova Albanians they "should give up the policy of boycott, as a policy which has not yielded them any result so far". Kosovars are told, in addition, they should "incorporate in the political life of the country they live in", purported to be Serbia!

A few things should be recalled, although well-known to those who have a basic knowledge about the developments in the former Yugoslavia and in the south-east Europe.

The mainstream democratic institutions in Kosova have been built upon a legal and constitutional basis that Kosova enjoyed as one of the eight equitable federal units of the now defunct Yugoslavia.

Kosova had its own Parliament, Government and Presidency, all of them on a par rather than subordinate to Serbian counterpart institutions. All these institutions have operated in specific circumstances after the 1990 Serbian aggression.

The citizens of Kosova have resisted Serbian occupation, and rejected collaboration or subjugation, by building up and maintaining an infrastructure of democratic institutions. This infrastructure, which has served the citizens of Kosova and made their survival possible on an institutional basis, cannot be called illegal or parallel. It is Serbian- installed institutions in Kosova that can be duly and meaningfully, though mitigatedly, dubbed parallel institutions. They are nothing less than occupation authorities, as a matter of fact, whose only goal has been to make the life of the majority Albanian population impossible and forcing them flee their own country.

One can't by any logic - even the 'European logic' tag the new Albanian establishment has been indiscriminately employing in its verbal exercises - call 'parallel' the institutions established, elected, and maintained by at least 90 percent of the people. The installed institutions, un-elected, supported by police and military and half a dozen or so percent of the population match this 'parallel' adjective, and not vice versa. By all logic!

It is not the Kosovar ('parallel') institutions that have given rise to terrorist actions, as a corrupted logic might imply. The world has by now rightly identified Serbia as being engaged in state terror against an entire nation in Kosova.

The very insistence, be it verbal alone and advocated by fellow Albanians or others, that Kosovar Albanians accept foreign rule, Serbian occupation, is a special sort of terrorism.

It is but natural, ethically and politically, that Prime Minister Fatos Nano, his government, as well as world institutions and governments, fight Serbian occupation authorities and not the Kosovar mainstream institutions, the unprecedented civic and political society the people of Kosova have built up to survive and peacefully resist occupation, Serbian schemes of ethnic cleansing, which cases like Bosnia and Croatia have made the world aware of.

The country of the Kosovar Albanian people is Kosova, with its history, territory, borders, and e legal, democratic and constitutional order that has won a high level of international approbation. No one, no politician worth the name, should cherish any bizarre hopes the people of Kosova will be made to give up their aspirations to live a dignified life in their own free and democratic, independent country.

This is the message the Kosovars have imparted by virtue of their own political organization in the past seven or eight years. The Independence Declaration (1990), the Constitution of the Republic of Kosova (1990), the national referendum on independence (1991), the 1992 parliamentary and presidential elections (1992) - this is the institutional and peaceful route Kosova has trodden in in pursuit of its happiness, under the leadership of President Ibrahim Rugova.

The coming parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for March 22, 1998, will be a new step to reconfirm this bid.

The Kosova Albanians can represent themselves; they need not be represented.

President Ibrahim Rugova and his government are the legal representatives of this nation. The world has duly acknowledged this, as Dr. Rugova's high- level meetings with heads of states, prime ministers, foreign ministers, have manifested.

The Parliament of the Republic of Albania recognized the Republic of Kosova in 1991. Albanian governments should stick to this.

The current government of Prime Minister Fatos Nano is hardly in any position to do more than this. It has a more pressing job in volatile Albania.

Let us make the circle full with regard to reported remarks of Prime Minister Nano, quoted earlier in this article, by recalling that it was his interlocutor, Dr. Klaus Kinkel, Germany's Foreign Minister, among the first to congratulate Dr. Ibrahim Rugova on his election in the 1992 vote in Kosova. It was with Kinkel that Rugova met several times in the past few years to discuss Kosova and the region.

[05] Serbian Police Shot at 20-year-old Albanian in Downtown Sk&nderaj

It was soon found out that the Albanian youth was Bashkim Rifat Jashari, a 20-year-old member of the Jashari family from Prekaz i Ul&t village of Sk&nderaj.

The Serbian police attacked brutally the Jashari family on 22 January for several hours, leaving behind two wounded girls, a lot of material damage.

[06] Ever Increasing Number of Albanians Tortured in Kijeva and Komaran

The police beat up severely Ali Krasniqi from Drenoc village, and harassed teachers Habib Gashi and Mehedin Gashi from Kijeva.

Yesterday (Monday) the Serbian police ill-treated M&hill Prenaj, Nik& Gashi and Hysen Bashota, teachers at the "Lasgush Poradeci" secondary school of Kijeva. They too have been intimidating the Albanian students of this school.

Scores of other Albanians have been tortured at the Serbian police check- point in Komaran. In Komaran the Serbian police have deployed heavy forces, took by force two Albanian-owned houses and put up fortification.

Sources in Malisheva says the number of the ill-treated persons is much higher, but they failed to obtain information from all of them.

[07] Repression Chronicle

Sources in Suhareka said the Serbian police conduct inspection every evening, thus harassing a lot of people.

Prishtina: Ismet Beqiri, secretary of the LDK branch I at Kodra e Trimave quarter of Prishtina was summoned to report at the Serbian security HQ in Prishtina.

He was interrogated about LDK activities, as well as the upcoming parliamentary and presidential election in Kosova.

He was held at the Serbian security premises for an hour.

Mitrovica: On 7 February at 10 p.m., ac Serbian police patrol stopped on the road Shpend Istrefi (24), Besnik Kumnova (23) and Rizah Mustafa (23) from Mitrovica. They were on their way to hospital with an ill person in their car, LDK sources said.

The police forced the three to stand still in the middle of the road for forty minutes, ignoring the fact that they were going to hospital.

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