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Excellency,
The decomposition of the Communist Yugoslavia brought
out onto surface unsolved national issues of the peoples
who lived in former Yugoslavia. Precisely the unsolved
national issues of that artificial creation and in
particular the Serbian systematic and permanent
hegemonism and expansionism were the decisive causes of
its dramatic decomposition. Its decomposition, in fact,
re-emphasized the more than a century old problem that
has been known by the name the question of the Balkans
in international history and politics.
1. The Balkan Crisis and International Politics
The present tragedy in Bosnia is a typical Balkan
tragedy where the ethnic and geostrategic interests
meet. Unfortunately, the development of the Balkan
north-western crisis witnesses the international
political crisis as well. The Albanian national
question, parallel to the questions between Serbs and
Croatians and Serbs and Bosnians (Muslims), presents the
key question of the Balkans.
We consider that the Albanian question in the Balkan
crisis has not found its appropriate treatment by the
international forums and policy. It has been minimized,
and sometimes completely ignored by the international
factors that have undertaken the responsibility for the
solution of conflicts in the space of former Yugoslavia.
In this century end as well, they request the Albanian
nation to sacrifice its national interest for the sake
of Balkan peace. The intentions of Albania to
international integration are conditioned by its
acceptation of the status quo of the Albanian question.
Modus vivendi solutions are imposed in form of an
autonomy of Kosova, although it is historically
overpassed, and of a minority status of the Albanians of
Macedonia, Montenegro and South Serbia (Presheva,
Bujanoc and Medvegjë).
The position of some factors of international policy
towards the Serbian occupations in the space of former
Yugoslavia may unfortunately remind one today of the
positions of the international conferences mentioned
above, whose decisions were tragic for the Albanian
population.
The dramatic decomposition of the former Yugoslav
Federation has been legitimized in fact as the most
efficient means for some of its national constituents to
reach their intentions. The Serbian regime has been
carrying out ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia by
war, and silent ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosova.
We wonder whether this means that the peoples not
determined to war and unsupported by some great power,
such as Albanians in former Yugoslavia, will continue to
remain as the occupied people and ruled by others in the
future.
Some centuries of the international policy, that on the
one hand predict peaceful solutions of interethnic and
inter-state problems, seem on the other hand to admit in
fact in silence the reality created by violence, such as
the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosova
and the other Albanian ethnic territories.
The present declarative engagement of Serbia for
solution of the problems by political dialogue, after
the occupation of parts of the former Yugoslav
Federation, including here Kosova as well, is not but a
political and colonial hypocrisy of an accomplished
fact.
The Albanian national question has Balkan dimensions and
requests a special treatment, with full historical and
political responsibility: complete international
awareness of the Albanian national position now and of
falsification of their history, of speculative facts and
situations by their neighboring occupiers. The fail to
treat this capital Balkan question parallel to the
national questions of Muslims, Serbs and Croatians in
Bosnia does not secure stability and mutual cooperation
in the Peninsula.
As a nation cut up into two halves and as the most
parceled nation in former Yugoslavia and in the Balkans,
the Albanian people, who together with Greeks and
Rumanians are the oldest ones of this disturbed
peninsula, deserve the right to take part as an equal
political subject with the other peoples at all
international tables that want the right and steady
solution of the Balkan questions and the change of the
Peninsula into a zone of peace and mutual cooperation.
2. The History of the Albanian Question
The West can get introduced to our history, although not
rarely only through Serbian propaganda. When similar
historic experiences and situations are repeated it is
inevitable not to refer to historical arguments. It is
not unnecessary to remind You in this occasion of some
essential data that make the Albanian national question
one of the most tragic ones in the Balkans and Europe,
since the Eastern Crisis and hitherto.
Due to the geostrategic position, at the crossroads of
the West and East, Albanians have been found under long
occupations by Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and Slavs,
that have retarded their national and state
emancipation.
During the process of disintegration of the Ottoman
Empire, the Albanians of all the three confessions
fought against it during many centuries of its ruling
and also during the Balkan wars. Nevertheless, more than
half of the autochthonous Albanian population in their
ethnic and historic territories fell under the Serbian,
Montenegrin and Greek regimes. The present tragedy of
Bosnia has been experienced by Albanians far from the
eyes of the world, on the eve and immediately after the
Congress of Berlin, when Serbia and Montenegro carried
out the ethnic cleansing of more than 350,000 Albanians
from the north-western ethnic region (the Sanjac of Nis
of the Vilayet of Kosova and the Albanian territories in
Montenegro), without the right to return to their
hearths and to be compensated for their legitimate
property.
In 1913, by the decision of the Ambassadorial Conference
in London, Greece annexed Çamëria, an Albanian ethnic
region, from where the great majority of Muslim
Albanians were exchanged forcefully with Greeks from
Turkey, and the majority of Orthodox Albanians were
helenised. In 1944-1945 Greece deported 25,000 Albanians
by military forces from Çamëria.
The Albanian question was created by the Great Powers at
the Congress of Berlin at which Albanians were not
recognized as a nation; the Ambassadorial Conference
made it tragic by recognizing the occupations of Serbs,
Montenegrins and Greeks of the Albanian land; it was
sealed then, also in an unjust way by the Conference of
Versailles, not recognizing the political and national
self-determination of Albanians and recognizing the
violent annexations, in order not to anger the century
long protectors of Orthodoxism in the Balkans.
These international conferences committed historical
crimes, legalizing ethnic occupations and cleansing of
Albanian ethnic and historical territories as ‘Ottoman
possessions’ and identifying the Muslim Albanians with
Turks. Terrible bargains were made with Albanian
territories. In order to dominate Austro-Hungary in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro were allowed
to dominate Kosova and other Albanians regions in south
Serbia and Montenegro.
At the time of the Eastern crisis, this ethnic situation
was present in the southern Balkans: 1.6 - 1.7 million
Albanians on 58,000 km2 of the ethnic trunk; 1.4 million
Greeks on 51,300 km2, 1.6 million Serbs on 38,000 km2
and 190,000 Montenegrins on 4,700 km2.
By the Congress of Berlin and the Ambassadorial
Conference in London, Greece became 2.7 times larger,
Montenegro 3 times and Serbia 2.8 times, by stretching
onto Vojvodina by the Conference of Versailles. Now
Serbia intends to stretch its state sovereignty onto 1/2
of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a part of Croatia,
therefore, onto another 25,000 km2.
Historically Albanians were the most unprotected and
lonely nation, as they did not belong to any European
big family.
3. The State Terror and Albanophobia
The Serbian state terror exerted upon Albanians presents
a special chapter of century long Serbian politics,
under the realm of Russia, since the very first
occupations of the Albanian territories. The permanent
strategy of Serbian monstrous projects since the second
half of the last century and during this century has
been ethnic cleansing of Albanian ethnic territories and
their transformation into Slavic ones.
Since the Balkan wars, Serbia and the royal and
communist Yugoslavia have continued the genocide on
ethnic Albanians, killing thousands and thousands of
people, expatriating around a million Albanians to
Turkey, expropriating 381,245 hectares of their land and
colonizing it with around 150,000 Serbs and
Montenegrins. Now Serbia has settled thousands of
Serbian colonists from Croatia in Kosova. This Serbian
terror with their intention to ethnic cleansing of the
Albanian territories has continued to the present day
with its most rude forms. The massive exodus of more
than 500,000 Albanians to the Western countries is now
due to this terror.
Kosova and other Albanian ethnic territories under
former Yugoslavia have had Albanian ethnic character in
all their history, and during the time under the
sovereignty of Southern Slavs; they have been occupied
by them and as such they have been declared as Slavonic
territories.
The slogans Kosova ‘the Serbian Jerusalem’, ‘Old
Serbia’, ‘the cradle of Serbia’, ‘unchristianized
Albanians’, etc. are a mythological arsenal of the
anti-Albanian propaganda, by which the Serbian century
long albanophobia has been emphasized.
The Serbian state policy has raised Kosova to its
national myth in order to hold it as its colony to the
present day.
The Serbian pretensions to their historic and
ethnographic right to Kosova now sound absurd, as they
are based on its occupation during 13th and 14th
centuries by the Serbian medieval state of Ras, whose
center was outside the present Kosova, and on Serbian
adoption of Roman-Byzantine churches in this region.
The schism of Catholic and Orthodox churches in 1054
passed through the middle of the Illyrian-Albanian land.
Albanians then belonged to both of these rites.
The Serbian independent church was recognized only in
14th century.
The Serbian lament on the lost battle of Kosova in 1389
could, in fact, be only a lament of the tragedy of the
whole Balkan coalition caused by the Asian invasion, and
a complex for revenge on ethnic Albanians.
Even now Serbia is ruining Albanian historical and
cultural monuments and erecting ecclestiacal and
historical monuments, covering Kosova with Cyrillic
subscriptions, as if it were the Middle Ages, in order
to create the Serbian image of it.
According to Slavonic sources, the Serbian element in
Kosova before the Balkan wars was 5% of its population,
and now it presents 8%. According to the Serbian
colonial logic on Kosova, the whole Balkans would belong
to Turks, since they ruled over it for five centuries;
all the republics of the former Soviet Union would
belong to Russia, since they were dominated by Russians;
India would belong to Britain, Algeria to France, etc.
The Albanian ethnic land occupied by the Southern Slavs,
due to its natural resources and sensitive geostrategic
position in the Balkans, can be only the last colony in
Europe, and the occupied Albanians a strange tissue in
whatsoever state organization.
The geographical compactness and historical continuity
of Illyrian-Albanians are an undeniable argument of the
ethno-historic right of Albanians to their ethnic land.
Kosova has had its historical and ethnic
Illyrian-Albanian identity since the antique Dardania,
the Vilayet of Kosova since 1867, one of the four
vilayets of Albania in the Ottoman Empire, and its
liberation legitimacy from the Ottoman occupation in
1912 and the fascist occupation in 1944. Kosova has also
its geographic, economic, demographic and cultural
integrity. Kosova cannot be a question of the Serbian
sovereignty, as it was annexed by military violence in
1912, 1918 and 1945.
The Serbian political accusation of Albanian
secessionism is another apriority in speculation to
justify their violent cutting off Albanians from their
ethnic compactness and to satanize their natural
historical legitimacy for national integration.
‘Kosova is the land where the Slavonic movement in the
Middle Ages was stopped. It cut in half a panslavonic
dream: the occupation and slavicization of the main
peninsula of Europe’ (Islamil Kadare).
4.The National Status
The political and national will of the Albanians in
former Yugoslavia have not been taken into consideration
to the present day by the sophistic justification of the
term minority by which without any rational or empirical
basis has been covered not less than half of this
national wholeness. The term national minority, by which
half of the Albanian nation, cut up intentiously into
several administrative units in the former Yugoslav
Federation, despite their geographic compactness and
historic and ethnic continuation among them, on the one
hand, and their national state, on the other hand, is
not adequate and does not express the mere reality. It
is simply a speculative apriority.
The cutting off the half of the Albanian national
wholeness and their ethnic land into three republics of
former Yugoslavia and the Autonomous Province of Kosova,
under the Serbian control, was a colonialist method of
Serbs and Montenegrins and Macedonians to destroy the
national being of Albanians. Cut up in this way under
the sovereignty of Southern Slavs, not only that
Albanians could not do their minimal communication with
their national state, but, further more, their cutting
up into four special units of the former Yugoslav
Federation aimed at the utmost disintegration of their
historical, political, economic, cultural and linguistic
entity, as well as their permanent and systematic
preventing from being united with the other half
Albanians.
The line of parceling of the Albanian ethnic land, in
which Albanians are the sole population or constitute
the great majority, the administrative borders of the
former Yugoslav Federation that are now known as state
borders of Serbia (with Kosova annexed), of Macedonia
and Montenegro, cut through the core tissue of
Albanians, making in this way this half of the Albanian
nation incapable to develop normally in their national,
historical, cultural and linguistic environment, unlike
the other peoples of the Balkans.
The Albanian question under Yugoslavia cannot be
discussed first of all as a matter of human rights and
liberties, but as an ethnic question of a nation cut
into pieces; the only nation in the Balkans and Europe
cut into two halves and unequal to the other peoples of
the Old Peninsula and Continent.
The Albanian question cannot be treated now as a
minority question in the Serbian-Montenegrin Federation
either, since Albanians are more numerous than
Montenegrins that constitute only 5% of this federation,
and yet have their own republic, whereas Albanians
constitute 16.6%, or 1/3 of the population of
multinational Serbia.
The Albanians in Macedonia cannot be a minority either,
since they constitute 1/3 of the population of this
state, also multinational.
The Albanians in former Yugoslavia were not minority in
relation to the other half of the Albanian nation that
lives within the political borders of the present
Albania.
The Albanian question is not raised now from the issue
of ‘minority’ to the issue of a nation cut into two
halves due to the consequence of ‘uncontrolled’
demographic multiplying of the Albanians in former
Yugoslavia, as it has been presented by the
anti-Albanian propaganda. At the time when the
independence of present Albania was recognized, more
than half of its land and population remained outside
its borders: under the Serbian, Montenegrin and Greek
rules. From the Albanian ethnic trunk were pruned 29,000
km2 with 1,200,000 Albanians, and the independent
Albania remained then with 28,000 km2 and 750,000
inhabitants!
Now 7,000,000 Albanians in the Balkans stretch on 55 to
60,000 km2, and only 28,565 km2 are sovereign; 7.5
million Serbs possess over 120,000 km2; 500,000
Montenegrins possess 13,713 km2; 1.3 million Macedonians
possess 25,713 km2 and 9.5 million Greeks possess
130,938 km2.
5. The Political Will and the Right to
Self-determination
The Albanian people in former Yugoslavia, who constitute
half of the Albanian population in the Balkans, and who
contrary to their political will were found under the
regime of Southern Slavs, requests that their political
and national will should be respected. This half of the
whole Albanian population, that has been treated
unjustly as minority in former Yugoslavia, namely in
Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, requests that their
national, historic and political, and finally civil fate
should not be left in the hands of the states and
peoples with whom they want to have good neighborhood,
to be equal, free and sovereign.
The Albanians in former Yugoslavia were the third people
by their number, after Serbs and Croatians, 8 times more
than Montenegrins, 2.5 times more than Macedonians, and
more than Slovenians and Muslims. Nevertheless, only
Albanians, as a non-Slavonic nation were deprived of the
right to political subjectivity, to have their own
republic in former Yugoslavia, and since the beginning
they were not allowed to become united with their
national state.
The legitimate and natural requests to determine
themselves on the national fate of this half of the
Albanian population have been articulated several times
by democratic and institutional ways: by the Resolution
of the Antifascist National Liberation Council of Kosova
and Dukagjin at the Conference held at the village of
Bujan on the Mountains of Gjakova on 31 December, 1943
and 1, 2 January, 1944, that was signed by the
representatives of Albanians, Serbs and Montenegrins,
according to which the Albanians in Yugoslavia were
recognized the right to their unification with Albania
after the Second World War would end; through the
well-known democratic manifestations of Albanians in
1968 and 1981 for the Republic of Kosova; through the
Constitutional Declaration of Kosova on 2 July, 1990;
the Constitution of the Republic of Kosova on 7
September 1990, and the Referendum on independence and
sovereignty of the Republic of Kosova on 26-30
September, 1991, as well as through the referendums of
Albanians on their status of state-formation in West
Macedonia and political-territorial autonomies in South
Serbia and Montenegro.
Albanians have a strong European historical and cultural
identity and permanent intention to full integration in
the West civilization.
We find the political and national self-determination of
the Albanians in former Yugoslavia to be the only right
and steady solution of the Albanian question. This is
their ethnic legitimate, historical and democratic right
to national freedom and independence.
Self-determination with a free referendum, under
international supervision, at which the plebiscite will
on the national political status is respected, does not
threaten the new world order.
This is guaranteed by the international right and the
acts of UN, such as the Chart of Nations, International
Treaty on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration of
Recognition of the Colonized Countries and Peoples, etc.
The remained Yugoslavia has not yet been recognized
internationally, and Kosova was an integral subject of
the former Federation.
The Albanians in former Yugoslavia deserve the right to
self-determination due to mere political reasons:
Albanians did not take part in the establishment of the
present Serbian-Montenegrin Federation; reparceling of
the Albanian ethnic compact land, after the independence
of the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia,
deepened further on their national disintegration and
increased colonisational proportions of the neighbours
on Albanians. Now they are an oppressed, discriminated
and endangered nation.
The question of Albanians in former Yugoslavia cannot be
treated now as an internal issue of Serbia, Macedonia or
Montenegro. So much the less can Serbia deny the right
to self-determination of Albanians while it supports and
protects the right to self-determination of Serbs in
Bosnia.
The ethnic distance between Albanians and Serbs,
Montenegrins and Macedonians is much bigger than between
Serbs and Montenegrins, on the one hand, and Croatians,
Slovenians and Macedonians, on the other hand. While
their Slavonic origin was not sufficient to live in a
common state together, Albanians have much more less
reasons to accept the political solution under the
sovereignties of Serbia, Montenegro and FYR of
Macedonia, where they would remain permanent sources of
conflicts, with Balkan and European implications.
In such relationships Albania itself would not have been
able to develop in the spirit of modern democracy and
could not have developed good relationships with its
neighbouring countries.
It is extraordinary in the history of mankind that one
half of a nation should be recognized the right to
independence and sovereignty and the other part of the
same nation to be denied the right to independence and
sovereignty. In this way, the complete possibility and
capability of general development has been double
reduced for the half sovereign and independent part of
the Albanian nation. The other occupied half of the
population, which is deprived of the right of
self-determination, is apart from its impossibility for
normal national development continuously threatened by
the danger of denationalization in this space. The
present Albanian state is only a torso, missing its
limbs.
The saying the Balkans to the Balkan peoples would be
illusory, while one half of the Albanian nation would be
under the sovereignty of their neighbouring Balkan
countries.
Albanians have never accepted the unjust decisions made
at the international conferences. Permanent interethnic
tensions and temporary conflicts with the occupiers of
their land are one of the arguments of their
disagreement with their national position and colonial
treatment. The right to self-determination of half of
the Albanian nation has been continuously denied and it
is being denied nowadays. In this way, political and
national interests of Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians
and Greeks have been implemented and are being
implemented to the disadvantage of the Albanian nation
in the present time.
Albanians have not enjoyed their elementary human and
national rights in their ethnic occupied areas. Such a
situation has been continuing to the present day, when
their human and national rights are being violated
dreadfully. In essence, they are still denied rudely the
right to free and independent national development.
Self-determination of Albanians is now the question of
their national existence, the question of freedom and
independence, of liberation from the colonial oppressing
golgotha, from exploitation and discrimination.
Different international political and juridical criteria
for the similar national questions cannot be allowed: to
recognize the right to national self-determination to
1-1.2 million Serbs, to 2.5 million Muslims and 600-700
thousand Croatians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to 500
thousand Montenegrins and to 1.3 million Macedonians,
and on the other hand to deny it to around 3 million
Albanians in former Yugoslavia, (2 million Albanians in
Kosova, 700-800 thousand of them in FYR of Macedonia, to
100 thousand in South Serbia and 50 thousand in
Montenegro).
6. National Unification
One can say that Albanians are not the only ones that
have remained outside the borders of their national
state, that the case of Hungarians or Russians is
similar. The comparison of the Albanian nation cut into
two halves with these two nations is not appropriate, be
it only for these two reasons: first, both these nations
had their empires and as a consequence of that they
stretched nationally, and Albanians during the whole
their historical existence have never been an
expansionist nation, so they do not have historical sins
of occupying other lands and peoples; second, in the
case of decomposition of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in
1918, about three million Hungarians that remained
outside the borders of Hungary do not constitute the
half of the Hungarian nation, and similarly several
million Russians that remained outside Russia on the
occasion of decomposition of the Soviet Union, do not
make even approximately half of the Russian nation
outside their national state. Hungarians in other
countries make less than 1/3 of the Hungarian nation,
and Russians outside the borders of Russia present less
than 1/7 of the Russian nation.
It can be said that the right solution of the Albanian
question requires the displacement of state borders.
Precisely, the right and permanent solution of the
Albanian question is connected to the displacement of
the borders between Albania and the neighbouring
countries, that are separated by a land belt inhabited
by Albanians in the absolute majority. Borders are not
so sacred as not to be moved. After the fall of the
Berlin Wall, that divided the German nation into the
West and East, the Federal Republic of Germany and
Democratic Republic of Germany became united. Out of the
former Soviet Union 15 states of Slavonic and
non-Slavonic peoples have been created. In a similar way
Checkia and Slovakia have been separated.
The international borders of former Yugoslavia have
become the borders of the new states: now Italy is
bordered on Slovenia and Croatia; Austria on Slovenia;
Hungary on Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia; Greece,
Bulgaria and Albania are bordered on FYR of Macedonia.
Bosnia and Herzegovina with internationally recognized
has been ethnically divided into two entities.
Therefore, changes of international borders have already
been evidenced, but in the states of Western Europe and
in the states of Eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia.
Why should then not be displaced the state borders on
the principle of ethnic great majority? The border
between Albania and former Yugoslavia was kept hanging
up to 1926 and it was not the border on Serbia.
Albanians request the solution of their national
question, be it with displacing of borders, unharming
the neighbouring peoples. It is more reasonable to have
the peaceful displacement of ethnic borders than the
defense of the present borders with bloodshed, with
permanent dangerous consequences to peace and stability
of the Balkans and Europe.
The borders that separate Albanians now are colonial
borders. The wealth of their land has become their
misfortune. The cutting of Albanian ethnic, historic and
geographic compactness caused catastrophic consequences
in their economic, social, cultural, political and
civilization development. Due to this reason Albanians
now are the most damaged people in the Balkans and the
most needy people in Europe.
That is why Albanians now request their national
uniting. Where they are the only population or in the
majority they should be included within their national
state, where their ethnicity can be defended and
developed freely, similarly to all the other Balkan
nations and those in Europe.
Since Kosova consists of a compact territory and
Albanians there constitute 90 per cent of the
population, it would be much more normal that this
territory were also independent (with the possibility to
become united with Albania, if both the countries would
like it. (Paul Garde, ‘The Life and Death of
Yugoslavia’)
7. The Albanian Factor and Balkan Balance
The Albanian status quo cannot be held to the present
historic changes, when big disintegrations and
reintegrations are taking place in Europe. The Tragic
wall within the Albanian nation now is an absurd in
modern European integrations and the new international
order. The new international integrations cannot be
lasting without national integrations. The rational and
democratic solution of ethnic questions is a
precondition of europeanization of the Balkans, of the
modern democratic development of a civilized society and
market economy.
Balkan peace and good neighbourhood cannot be secured by
the position of Albanians cut into two halves and
parceled in the new southern Slavic states, therefore,
with one half of Albanians oppressed and discriminated
nationally. Albanians now request that their historic
injustice should be corrected and the half of its nation
should not be treated as minority. There is no other
nation in the Balkans or Europe whose other half lives
under the sovereignty of someone else. Why should it be
requested from Albanians further on to accept this
tragic position?
The Balkans will continue to be a center of regional and
European crises and conflicts and it will not be able to
become integrated in the community of the old continent
without the right and steady solution of national
questions of its peoples.
In the present international conditions, the declaration
of the free political will of the Albanians in former
Yugoslavia is the minimum of the Albanian requests. Any
concession under this minimum implies a new tragedy of
Albanians. Provisory and half way solutions remained the
source of permanent conflicts.
Kosova now is a heavy mill-stone in Albanian-Serbian
relations in the Balkans. The Serbian interest in Kosova
is simply colonial and hegemonistic, and the Albanian
interest is ethnic and existential.
The national interest of these two peoples require good
neighbourhood between them, but each of them free and
sovereign in their own land. A democratic Serbia,
released from mythological phantasms and
colonial-expansionist mentality, would make national
apology to Albanians for the historic genocide exerted
on them and would accept the ethnic and historic
reality, recognizing the democratic and national will to
Albanians.
We consider that no other reason exists for further
denying the inalienable right to self-determination of
the half of Albanian nation, if not belonging to the
Muslim religion of a part of theirs, that was imposed by
their long occupation. But such a motive or judgment
would threaten the very ethnic identity of Albanians,
since they before being Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim
believers are Albanians, and perhaps the only people
who, despite their confessional pluralism, does not know
what religious fanaticism is. Be it only this fact, it
shows their religious tolerance, that is the priority
that Albanians give to their nation in comparison to
their three confessional rites, of which no one is alien
to them.
We hope that this Memorandum will be accepted with good
understanding and find your engagement in the evaluation
of the Albanian actual position with historical
responsibility and for the right solution of their
national question. Albanians cannot be treated any more
as a victim that requests mercy, but as a historical
subject that requests international right. The Albanian
question is now the major national issue of 7 million
Albanians in the Balkans and 4 million Albanians in
Diaspora. The present Albania is a state of only one
half of the Albanian nation. The Albanian national state
would be an important factor of a new balance in the
Balkans.
Further ignorance of the Albanian issue and legalization
of an accomplished fact imply repeating the historical
crimes of international diplomacy to the Albanian nation
and escalation of conflicts in dangerous proportions.
Albanians do not wish that Kosova and the other ethnic
occupied territories of theirs be the epicenter of a new
Balkan earthquake, by which the united Europe and the
new world order could be endangered.
_____________________
* This Memorandum of the Forum of Albanian
Intellectuals was sent on 26 October 1995 to the foreign
prime ministers of USA, Great Britain, France, Germany
and Russia.
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