Albania Says No Serb Transplanted After Kosova War

TIRANA, April 23 – In a first official reaction, Albanian Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha on Wednesday said unproven claims of Serbs killed and their organs sold after the war in Kosovo were a serious threat to peace and stability in the region.
Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte claimed, in her recently published memoirs, that Kosovo Albanians transported between 100 and 300 people, most of them Serb civilians, into northern Albania in June 1999 to murder the Serbs and remove their organs for transplant operations.
“We are sorry that a former international chief prosecutor, who has had all the possibilities to investigate and, if there exists proof to use them in the trials at the Hague Tribunal, writes nowadays a book full of inventions and absurdities which are not only immoral but also punishable,” said Basha at a news conference after meeting with visiting Bulgarian foreign Minister, Ivailo Kalfin.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Kosovo authorities to investigate claims by a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor that ethnic Albanian guerrillas killed dozens of Serbs and sold their organs at the end of the war in Kosovo.
Hundreds of Serbs and ethnic Albanians are still missing from Kosovo’s 1998-99 war.
Earlier this month, Olga Karvan, a spokeswoman for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said U.N. investigators found “no substantial evidence” that ethnic Albanian guerrillas killed dozens of Serbs and sold their organs at the end of the war in Kosovo, adding investigators had visited northern Albania in an attempt to substantiate the claims.
“We express our indignation that such inventions are being exploited by certain groups to delegitimize the Kosovar people’s fair war, its independence and also to blot Albanians’ image of Kosovo and Albania,” he said.
Basha said that Albania had offered full cooperation to international investigators. He further stated that inventing such, “nonexistent facts only encourages radicals, nationalism and the feeling of hatred, elements left behind and foreign to Albanians, and opens the way to unforeseen developments with a serious threat to peace, security and stability not only in Europe but in the whole region,” he said.
Basha also considered Kosova as a regional factor for peace and stability.
“Provocation from radical circles is a big threat to the Kosovar people and the government. But we believe being cold blooded, mature and self-reliant so that Kosova’s society and institutions responded in the only way to go ahead,” he said.
Basha expressed Tirana’s full support to Kosova’s development, including the creation of the foreign and defense ministries, saying Albania would always offer its contribution, including access to the Adriatic Sea.
On Serbia, Basha said he hoped it would become part of the European and Euro-Atlantic developments in the region.
“It is clear that whatever government is elected in Serbia, it cannot change anything in Kosova,” he said, meaning that general elections in Serbia had nothing to do with Kosova.