Spring stirring up of Albanian extremists in the Balkans not far off

Yesterday, Macedonian President Boris Trajkivsky’s two-day visit to Brussels started. Trajkovsky will negotiate with European Council’s chairman Roman Prodi, with NATO Secretary General George Robertson, with Xavier Solana, High Commissar for common foreign and security politics of EU, and with the European Parliament’s representative Pat Koks. According to information agencies, Trajkovsky will discuss with the Western leaders possible ways to return northern territories of Macedonia under the governmental forces’ control and organization of March donor conference on Macedonia. One of probable subjects is stirring up of Albanian extremists, which usually begins in spring and which is becoming more and more obvious in Macedonia. Though, all possible pieces of advice the human rights activists could give are predictable: to suppress all incidents exclusively through political negotiations. In the meanwhile, according to Russian special representative on Southeast Europe Vladimir Chizhov, today’s situation in Macedonia is very delicate and highly explosive. It is obvious that Albanian terrorist are sparing force for future destructive actions in the country and in general in the region; people resources, arm and ammunition are being illegally transported to Macedonia from Kosovo and south Serbia, from Western Europe and the Middle East. Macedonian Internal Ministry warns the West about danger foreign diplomatic missions to the republic’s are threatened with. This was declared by internal minister Ljubenu Boskovsky after the incident which took place in Skopje last Saturday. At that time, the Macedonian police tried to stop a minibus moving to the capital, though in response to this, the “passengers” started to fire at the policemen. As a result, the seven militants armed with up-to-date arm, grenades and radio station and dressed in NLA uniform were killed. Later it became known, according to Macedonian side, that the wreckers have been preparing terrorist acts against embassies of the US, Great Britain and Germany. All of the terrorists turned out to be Pakistani citizens… Two weeks ago, two Jordan citizens and two Bosnian Muslims were arrested just before US embassy to Macedonia. They admitted in the interrogations that their aim was to organize attempts on lives of high Macedonian functionaries and to prepare terrorist acts against Western diplomatic missions. The confession was confirmed with the disk containing a detailed plan of the diversion. Although Western embassies to Scopje declared increasing of security measures, the US and NATO prefer to neglect international terrorism’s presence in Macedonia, while saying the question is only about single cases…

Though, there are positive reports from the most southern republic of former Yugoslavia. According to RIA ‘Novosti’, for the first time in Macedonia, a woman gave birth to five children. This noticeable event took place on March 3. The heroic mother is 32-year-old Lilyana Iliyeski. To help the mother with three girls and two boys, the doctors had to do Caesarian section. The new born babies were not of strong build: everybody weighted a bit more than 500 g. Now, their condition is estimated as good. The new born babies have a 3-year-old brother. Boris Trajkovsky congratulated the happy parents and rendered money assistance to them.

Sergei Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/06/37968.html