SPEAKING OF KOSOVO AND THE CORRIDOR

AIM Skopje, 10 February, 1998

For ten days Macedonian media had a topic concerning which they all had good reason to take sides. According to the good old recipe, first president Gligorov, in statements given in interviews to Slovenian and Russian newspapers, sent a message to the citizens he is the president of. He said that he had no intention to run for president for the third time in regular elections which should be scheduled in autumn next year, and he proposed that a corridor for refugees be created in case war started in Kosovo. Writer and publicist, Kim Mehmeti, in the Forum of Skopje Dnevnik, sublimates the long repeated thesis and unquestionable fact: "For a long time, each journey of president Gligorov outside the state borders causes great uneasiness among a part of the citizens of our country. Not because we fear whether he will return to us safe and sound and with all the suitcases he has taken along (hint to the lost luggage on his way to China), but in expectations what he will tell us from over there". Indeed, the curious practice to address his public via foreign media was continued by Gligorov during his visits to Slovenia and Russia from where he announced that he would not run for the third term of office and gave the proposal for creation of a corridor for refugees in case of a possible violent outcome of the issue of Kosovo. The message Gligorov sent not only to the Macedonian public but to the public in the whole region via his interview given to Ljubljana Delo which has already caused numerous reactions is his proposal that, should war break out in Kosovo

• in other words should Milosevic decide to resolve the problem of Kosovo by force - Macedonia, that is, he as its president, offers creation of a corridor through which the wave of 200 to 400 thousand Kosovo Albanians would be escorted to Albania.

Of course, it is no news that it is subject of reflections and discussions what should be done if Kosovo acquires an armed denouement. Gligorov's proposal imposed primarily certain logical dilemmas. When he proposes the corridor along which refugees from Kosovo would be "directed" to Albania in case of an armed conflict over there, does that mean that he already knows that war is in sight? Despite all explanations he might give, it can be laid at Gligorov's door that with this proposal he is encouraging Milosevic to "set out" as he knows best - he can begin his bloody "blitz krieg", and people, as they always do, will flee, and the corridor will be ready for them! The statement was given after great pomp in the media with which success of the visit of Albanian prime minister Fatos Nano to Macedonia was accompanied. Does that mean that the Macedonian authorities personified in its first personage, Kiro Gligorov, had made some unofficial agreement with the new Albanian regime about the offered corridor, that the Macedonian authorities are some kind of a mediator between Serbia and Albania?

Is not this, for the second time in a short while, an abuse by the Macedonian president of good intentions of the new Albanian authorities? Because, if the corridor is established, should not the state into which the refugees will go agree to it? It is obvious that Kosovo is densely populated and that it is "ethnically cleansed", and as such an easy prey for Serbian use of force. And it is only natural that a wave of those who survive the initial fierce attack against Albanian villages would not go over the mountains to Albania or in the direction of Montenegro (also over the mountains), but that they would take the easiest road to Macedonia where all those who have relatives or friends would probably stay, although majority would prefer to be somewhere in the West. The evaluation about the number of refugees is also problematic: whether there will be 200 to 400 thousand of them or double that number depends on the extent to what Milosevic would manage to disable them (to use the mildest term) in Kosovo.

In that case, the question of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide, greater than the ones already seen in Bosnia could be put. What would the offered Gligorov's corridor be but collaboration in all that? And, of course, like all president's proposals, past and present, this inevitably imposes the question of his mandate beyond that given to him by the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia. A proposal such as this latest one about the corridor should by no means be given without prior consultation with those who, after all, have the last say, regardless of how obedient they are in relation to the "father of the nation" - members of parliament and the government.

Comments about the corridor can be mostly brought down to the domestic ones and of some of the neighbours concerned. The comments which arrived form Albania are to a certain extent controversial. The Macedonian media carried the declaration of the Albanian government spokesman, Ben Blushi, which was understood as support to Gligorov's idea, while at the same time, resolute rejection of the idea of the Albanian foreign minister Paskal Milo was also carried: "It should be clear that the Albanians are not people who would turn their backs to their native country. They have proved that and I believe this is also the case with the Albanians in Kosovo, who will survive there as they have survived for centuries... As concerning the 'corridor', I believe they will never be created, although someone would like that". Although Albanian authorities had an intensive diplomatic activity - the prime minister within ten days visited Paris and Brussels and had contacts on the highest state level and the very top of EU administration - there were no public statements of interlocutors about the situation in Kosovo and the corridor, although it is clear that they were one of the topics on the agenda of these talks, simply because Europe is thinking out loud about it for quite some time already.

For the domestic public there remained comments of the media in which another dimension could be recognized - xenophobia. The idea about the corridor was criticised both by (pro)state media and certain opposition political parties which started from the fact that it would be impossible to control the surge of refugees and which expressed fear that majority of refugees would stay in Macedonia, which would automatically lead to the change of ethnic composition of the population (the Albanians would suddenly become, if not the majority population, at least equal in number to the Macedonians), and this would lead to radicalisation of the Albanian political issue in Macedonia. Is not this the old, well-known thesis about "Albanian nuisance" again?

Of course, the situation in Kosovo, such as it is for years, and especially in the past period of intensified incidents whatever side may be organizing them, the attempt to present the Liberation Army of Kosovo as a regional phenomenon operating in Macedonia as well as in Kosovo, diverted due attention of the world public. Kosovo is interpreted from two aspects in Macedonia, again, depending on ethnic origin. The two interpretations, and the two ethnic groups, have one thing in common - that fire in Kosovo means stirring up of incidents in the whole region. The impression one gets is that among the Macedonian public the possibility of radicalisation of the situation in Kosovo intensifies Albanophobia, so that in its considerable part the variant of the solution according to the recipe of the northern neighbour is becoming acceptable. On the Albanian side, there is no dilemma concerning how the problem of Kosovo should be resolved - its independence is not even questioned.

A few days ago, Albanian parties in Macedonia - the Party of Democratic Prosperity and the Democratic Party of the Albanians, which is still without court registration, established by uniting of the Party of Democratic Prosperity of the Albanians and the National Democratic Party - appeared with a joint appeal on Kosovo. Their proclamation demands the same as the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo - the beginning of the dialogue of the Albanians from Kosovo with Yugoslav authorities by mediation of the international community. Representatives of these two parties, even if they did not agree about Gligorov's idea on the corridor, were this time unanimous in their assessment that "aspirations of the Serb party towards a military intervention of large proportions will be met by a massive, monolithic resistance of the Albanians wherever they may be, which was announced by declarations of all political and state structures of the Albanians in Kosovo, in the Republic of Albania and in Macedonia". A couple of years ago these parties which are like cat and dog sent a joint letter to the president of the USA Bill Clinton with the demand that the global solution of the Albanian issue in the region be put of on the agenda of Dayton negotiations. That is why the statement of a member of the leadership of the Party of Democratic Prosperity Abdulhadi Vejseli that "these two parties will act jointly concerning the vital interests of the Albanians" should not surprise anybody. This unison will of course cause old-new comments that "all the Albanians are the same, regardless of whether they are in power or in the opposition".

Let us end with an ironic point in the article of Kim Mehmeti in daily Dnevnik: "In case of war in Kosovo, corridors will certainly be opened. But not the ones through which refugees from Kosovo will be transported towards Albania, but quite different ones: corridors through which the Albanians will go to Kosovo in order to help in every way needed. Many Macedonian Albanians will go there never to return! Is not that sufficient reason for joy of those who rejoice at every reduction of the number of the Albanians in Macedonia, be it even by one part per thousand!?"

AIM Skopje

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