Albania lobbies for Kosovo at the UN

TIRANA, Sept. 27 – Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that lobbying for Kosovo was one of the main targets of the country’s delegation at the United Nation General Assembly’s session this year.
He said Albania would like to develop and consolidate its relations with Serbia but also criticized Belgrade for maintaining control of three ethnic Serbian areas in northern Kosovo.
Berisha said Serbia’s decision to maintain control over three ethnic Serbian communes in Kosovo demonstrated that Belgrade “still believes in reshaping borders in our region based on the failed and long overdue idea of ethnically ‘clean’ countries and Greater Serbia.”
In recent weeks tensions between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have flared anew, particularly in the north, sparking concerns from United Nations officials.
Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence. Kosovo wants customs officers to push its claim to statehood in the north, but Serbia sees the move as undermining its claim over the territory.
Roadblocks and disputed border crossings remain throughout the Serb-run north, posing a challenge to the 3,000-strong EU mission and the 5,500 NATO-led peacekeepers who are in charge of security. Both the EU and NATO have called for the roadblock to be removed to allow freedom of movement.
Berisha said that “Serbian culture in Kosova is today more secured than ever. I would like to reassure distinguished representatives of the Member States that the only threat they face is their exploitation to serve purposes of a bitter past that must not ever return.”
“However, the parallel structures paid by Belgrade in the three Serbian homogenous communes north of Mitrovica, where no other ethnic groups reside, have turned them in safe havens for organized crime and smuggling of all sorts.”
Albania continued to hope that Serbia would come to terms with that “undeniable and irreversible” reality.
Ironically, however, Berisha also supported Washington’s call toward Palestine to hold its request for membership into the UN. Berisha said they supported the idea of the Palestinian state but at a later stage and not without first achieving a deal with Israel.
Kosovo could be in the same position next year, though it is unlikely that Moscow would allow its bid to pass.