European Parliament debates Macedonia crisis

"A decision for dismantling the Macedonian-Slav nation in order to create a federal state must now be pursued with greater urgency," said Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) and European Parliament member, during a session parliamentary debate on the current Macedonian crisis. The debate also dealt with the issue of EU funding for the private Albanian University in Tetovo.

"I think," said Dupuis, "that what is happening now in Macedonia is proof that we have seen nothing, heard nothing, and learned nothing, or rather that you have seen nothing, heard nothing, and learned nothing."

According to the TRP Euro-deputy, "what is happening in Macedonia is happening in Macedonia, and there is no point in inventing excuses and saying that the crisis stems from Kosovo, from the movement of people--of former members of the UCK--towards Macedonia. The crisis in Macedonia is a crisis that has come about and that has been cultivated by the lack of a serious EU policy on Macedonia over the last ten years."

Dupuis called on his Socialist colleagues to remember the way in which he and Doris Pack have continually insisted on the importance of a project that seemed to them to be marginal, and which their Socialist and Communist colleagues have viewed with condescension: "I am referring," Depuis said, "to the project for the University of Tetovo, whose importance was fundamental as a response to one of the reasons for the frustration of Albanians in Macedonia. We were regarded as people regard 15-year-olds--with condescension--when we proposed in this Parliament that the former Yugoslavia should join the European Community as the only way to avoid the explosion that did in fact take place a few years later."

Macedonian refugees arrive in Albania

According to Albanian border authorities, thousands of refugees from Macedonia are entering Albania daily. On 18 March alone, 493 refugees crossed at the Qafė-Thanė checkpoint, according to the newspaper Shekulli.

Refugees say that the lines of Macedonian Albanian refugees stretch from the city of Struga to the Albanian border. The refugees are mainly from Tetovo, Gostivar and Kėrēovė, but in the long lines even cars from Ohri are seen. The fear of war has spread to southern Macedonia close to the Albanian-Macedonian border.

Pablo Zapata, spokesperson of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Tirana, told reporters that his organization has taken all necessary measures to confront a possible crisis of refugees from Macedonia and has been offering assistance since the arrival of the first refugees.

According to press sources, most of the Macedonian refugees are being accommodated in the homes of relatives or friends in Albania. This was also the case during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, when about 1 million refugees from Kosovo arrived in Albania, which contributed to the Albanian government's success in facing that terrible crisis.