A1 Television reports of a news item broadcast by the Albanian-language BBC service which quotes a senior Macedonian diplomat as announcing a meeting in Ohrid between presidents Gligorov, Zelev and Berisha in the near future. The meeting is supposed to include talks on the East-West transversal. So far, according to BBC, Gligorov and Zelev have agreed to the meeting. The news has not been confirmed by Macedonian authorities.
Athens News Agency says Macedonian Foreign Minister Stevo Crvenkovski, during a meeting with UN mediator Syrus Vance two days ago, repeated the Macedonian insistence on the lifting of the Greek-imposed embargo so that talks can begin.
In an interview with Nova Makedonija, Crvenkovski stated that the talks with Vance included no concrete initiatives and that he intends to remain for a longer period in New York. He also denied meeting the Greek representative to the UN, Christos Zacharakis, which had been alleged by the Greek press. Greek Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias says that Athens is waiting for a definite answer from Skopje so that negotiations can start.
At the last Paris session of the Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) Macedonian parliamentarians, Panche Nasev and Nano Ruzhin, spoke of the situation in the former Yugoslavia. Nasev stressed the role of Macedonia as a peace and stability factor in the region, stating a need for intensifying WEU-Macedonian cooperation. Ruzhin said Europe should have a more open policy toward Macedonia, underlining that European institutions and organizations need to be better informed of the situation in Macedonia. The Assembly expressed concern with the fact that Macedonia is still not an OSCE member and they adopted a resolution calling on Greece to lift its trade embargo.
At the meeting, as reported by A1 Television, the Greek Defense Minister Arsenis said it was in Greece's interest that the 'Skopje' republic exists. He said neighborly relations ought to be established so that overall relations can be normalized. Numerous goods do cross the Macedonian- Greek border, he said, explaining that the embargo refers only to energy sources. Meantime, Macedonia is still not a WEU member country but has attended Assembly sessions as an observing state.
The agenda of the UN General Assembly's September session will include a resolution on neighborly relations in the Balkans that was suggested at a General Assembly by Macedonia back in 1993, Makfaks reports. The Macedonian Foreign Ministry says the resolution, entitled 'Hope for Bosnia', suggests a series of measures and preventive actions to turn the Balkans into a zone of cooperation instead of conflict by the year 2000.
Yesterday the Macedonian Ministry of the Interior held a meeting to inform of an incident on Saturday near the village of Zhirovnica which is on the border with Albania. A group of about ten Albanian citizens illegally crossed the border to carry out illegal activities in Macedonian territory. The group was observed by a military patrol which fired warning shots in the air after one Albanian citizen took a shot at the Macedonian soldiers. There were no injuries or casualties. The individual who fired fled back into Albanian territory and the Macedonian patrol arrested 8 members of the group.
Meantime, the ministry informs, 874 cases of illegal crossings of the Macedonian border were registered in the first 5 months of the year - 220 individuals from Yugoslavia, 386 from Albania, 207 from Greece and 61 from Bulgaria. The number is lower by 74 cases compared to last year. Macedonian authorities have confiscated goods worth a total of DM 100,000 - mainly fuel, flour and foreign currencies. Reporters were also informed of the latest visit of General Dragoljub Botsinov, Chief-of-Staff of the Macedonia Army, to Slovackia and the Czech Republic. Botsinov visited several military bases and agreed to closer cooperation of the Macedonian army with the military establishments in these two countries.
At a meeting yesterday with Kurt Spallinger, Austrian ambassador in Albania who is also accredited for Macedonia and the delegation of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce currently visiting Macedonia, the Macedonian Chamber of Commerce president Dushan Petrevski said the entry visas that Austria has introduced for Macedonian citizens is just another blockade on the part of the European Union. The trade exchange between the two states is satisfactory. Last year it increased to $20 million, although with a deficit on the Macedonian side. Cooperation, however, is additionally burdened by the entry visas.
Spallinger said the visas are not to be interpreted as a blockade, as the decision was made by the Austrian government in order to preserve the country's inner stability. The decision, he added, is not aimed against legitimate economic relations between Austria and Macedonia.
Mrs. Margarita Lagos Bosel of the UN Human Rights Center attended a session of the Macedonian Parliament Committee on Ethnic Relations which was held yesterday. Surprised by the presence of reporters, she said the meeting was supposed to be only of an informative nature. Describing the situation, Committee members said there are social and ethnic tensions in the country, but there is also a desire to coexist through democratic dialogue. The fact that citizens of ethnic origin other than Macedonian stress their national affiliation, they should not be judged as disloyal toward the state, they said.
An NDP deputy to the Committee made a precedent by presenting a written report to Mrs. Bosel, instead of an oral presentation, of the position of Albanians in Macedonia. Following the reaction of another Committee member the report was circled among all members. The report said, among other things, that the state continues with its old discriminating policy which lowers the number of Albanians in the country to 22.9 per cent, whereas Albanians comprise a third of the appellation according to figures of the NDP Information Service. The authorities in Macedonia, the report concludes, present a false picture of the state as a democratic oasis of peace.
Despite the insistence of the reporters, Mrs. Bosel refused to comment on the talks, reminding them that comment should come from the sole authority of the UN Special Reporter, Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
The villagers of Batinci near Skopje have, for two days, been preventing the execution of the decision of local authorities to demolish a mosque in the village. Over 2,000 villagers stood against the city inspection and police forces. The irony of the case, A1 Television comments, is that the entire village is built without the required building licenses and the authorities could consequently decide to have all the houses leveled.
The Prilep brewery was yesterday sold to a ten-member managerial team which undertook an obligation to pay out DM 3.2 million within 5 years. The brewery was appraised at DM 10 million and 57 per cent of the company's assets had already been privatized by the Markovich model. Only the managerial team applied to the public privatization announcement of the brewery.
The bus-producing company '11 October' of Skopje is negotiating on possibilities with the Macedonian Government to produce 221 buses worth nearly $30 million, A1 Television reports. The deal would contribute to a revival of the company which is included in the list of the 23 largest loss-producing companies in Macedonia.
ICL, a leading European company for information technology and a member of the Fujitsu Group, opened a representative office in Skopje. The company has been in Macedonia for a longer period now cooperating with its Macedonian partner 'Pakom Co.'. It already has several clients and is presently installing the largest computer network in the country with the 'Makedonija' insurance company.
The freight-forwarding group of the Macedonian Chamber of Commerce is to be admitted to the Forwarding International Association (FIATA) next September in Seoul, South Korea. This was agreed at a recent visit of a Macedonian delegation to FIATA's head office in Zurich. This will enable Macedonia to take part in the organization's agencies, to print documents in both Macedonian and English and pay an annual membership fee. The international documents will facilitate customs formalities for exporters of Macedonian goods.
The Liberal Party of Macedonia yesterday held a press- conference to inform the public of its upcoming third congress, due in Skopje tomorrow. The congress, entitled 'We are Listening to Your Voice', will stress the need for ethnic reconciliation in Macedonia as a precondition for building a civil society and liberal democracy. It will also discuss potentials and perspectives of the Alliance for Macedonia.
VMRO-DPMNE is the first opposition party to have secured an invitation to attend the congress.
(Puls, 23 June 1995)
In Tetovo the leader of VMRO-DPMNE has started negotiations with PDP on a possible coalition at a local level. Ljupco Georgievski made the announcement at the center of western Macedonia, where political parties of Albanians are the most influential. The idea for this 'political pragmatism' was promoted at the 10th VMRO Congress. Such a territorial division, of this mostly national party, hides in itself an inner controversy - the party is going back to municipalities where the Macedonian population, feeling endangered by an Albanian assimilation, sought a defender in VMRO-DPMNE during the first free elections in the country. It was during the campaign in this very region that the VMRO-DPMNE leader Ljupco Georgievski said the famous slogan: 'We will cut off the claws of the Albanian eagle.' Is it plausible that these two parties, directly opposed until only yesterday, will be able to establish mutual cooperation at the level of local power? The very dialogue between Shakir and Georgievski is reason enough for cautious analyses of the idea.
As a pretext, here are several pieces of information. The loud promotion of Georgievski's idea for cooperation with PDP is not a result of a previous agreement between party leaders. Abdurahman Aliti did publicly state views on common interests of PDP and VMRO-DPMNE. Shakir Aliti, president of the Tetovo township committee, has neither the authority nor the reputation of Abdurahman Aliti. The dialogue between VMRO-DPMNE and the lower leadership of PDP followed a meeting between top leaders of PDP and their government coalition partners, the Social Democrats. Despite initial differences in views, and even confrontations with the prime minister, PDP still ended up discussing common interests instead of differences between the coalition partners.
The second reason to be suspicious of this newest coalition between VMRO-DPMNE and PDP would be past organized meetings between the two parties in Zagreb where they worked on a possible cooperation for winning power in the first parliament structure in Macedonia. The third reason to doubt the whole thing are the two parties' mutual accusations, the Macedonian nationalist party mainly repeating that the government coalition is an 'unnatural Albanian-Communist' one, and the PDP saying that VMRO-DPMNE followers are nothing but 'national chauvinists' seeking' bloodshed in Macedonia, but will have it if necessary'.
Times have changed although the main actors are still on the scene. The coalition model seems to have turned into the best way towards winning power in the country, even if it means changing sides. If PDP can enter a coalition with the Alliance for Macedonia, why could they not do it with others as well? The Macedonian-Albanian dialogue toward getting close could also be seen in the recent talks between the Democratic Party and the PDP-A, led by Dzaferi and Tachi. This is the new image of out-of-parliament parties, whose strategy for overtaking power in Macedonia apparently has to count on the political factor of Albanians in the country. Possible positive effects of this would be more acceptable under two conditions: that Macedonia admits that it is a multiethnic state and that political parties of Albanians never leave the Macedonian constitutional framework and territorial integrity to achieve their goals. Here are also some facts to be taken into account when speculating on whether two extreme political forces can come close enough to enter into a coalition.
The viewpoints of VMRO-DPMNE are widely known: national state of the Macedonian people, social ownership, territorial integrity and protection of minority rights of Macedonians abroad. Albanians gathered around PDP, on the other hand, stand for a civilian state, although still not giving up the option for a constitutive status for the Albanian minority in the country and possible territorial and political autonomy. As opposed to all this, both parties are inclined toward one (different, naturally) neighbor of Macedonia. Yet, both parties agree that the potential 'Serbization' of Macedonia is the greatest danger.
True, there have been identical reactions by both parties in regard to certain events: they have obstructed various constitutional solutions, boycotted referendums, and sent letters to the Council of Europe full of accusations against the state's interior policy. Their mutual enemy seems to be the Macedonian police and its 'inclination toward the use of excessive power'. Their differences, on the other hand, include issues of inclusion of nationalities in the state administration, education in the mother tongue, and official status of minority languages. Analyses should also take into account the two parties' political positions - one is out of parliament and with no chances to influence the government, while the other is a participant in the government and creator of the official policy.
For the time being the idea for a coalition between VMRO- DPMNE and PDP seems to be a step to re animate the Macedonian national party and enable its comeback in the center of political events while neglecting the possible reactions of both parties' electorates. Sudden changes surely do not contribute to obtaining credibility in a party's serious and long-term political goals.