Open letter to the European Union troika

On 5 February, Olivier Dupuis, Secretary General of the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) and Member of the European Parliament, sent a open letter regarding Kosovo Albanian hostages in Serbia to Anna Lindh, Acting President of the Council, Chris Patten, Commissioner for External Relations, and Javier Solana, High Representative for Foreign Policy and Common Security.

According to the Tirana office of the TRP, in his letter Dupuis strongly criticized Yugoslav President Kostunica for ignoring the fate of about 700 Kosovo Albanians held in Serbia's prisons and for ignoring the terrible war waged by the Serbian regime of Milosevic over the last 10 years. He also demanded the attention of European institutions to the situation.

"President Kostunica has no memory of the death of my friend Izet Muhamedagic, the Vice Minister of Justice in the Sarajevo government, a Transnational Radical Party member, and supporter of the campaign for the International Court. Rescued from certain death in a field or a police station somewhere in the Republic of Sprska, thanks to the efforts of several Radical activists in the summer of 1994, he died a few weeks later in the helicopter that was trying to get him and his colleagues in the Sarajevo government out of Bihac," writes the TRP secretary general in his open letter. Calling for action to force the Serbian government to take due responsibility, Dupuis adds that "President Kostunica, it seems, has only one memory: the one Milosevic left to him. It is the memory of authoritarian regimes, the memory of the leader's speeches, and the memory of the 'resistance' against the international conspiracy."