TIRANA, May 2 – Albania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs has accused Macedonia’s former Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE party leader Nikola Gruevski and President Gjorge Ivanov of launching an anti-Albanian rhetoric and using so-called Albanian platform as an alibi for their failure.
In a televised interview broadcasted Monday, the Albanian foreign minister said that Gruevski and Ivanov are considering Albanians “as seasonal workers in their own country.”
“The Albanian parties in Macedonia have held negotiations with both VMRO DPMNE and LSDM parties. The Albanian platform was initially accepted by VMRO, but they opposed the issue of the Special Prosecutor and the extension of the Prosecutor mandate,” Ditmir Bushati said.
“A full implementation of the Albanian platform requires the understanding of the entire Macedonian factor. Some of the issues in question require Constitutional amendments, which cannot be done without two thirds of the votes,” he said.
“We have supported a platform of Macedonia’s Albanian political factor in an attempt to further the implementation of the incomplete Ohrid Agreement, create a Euro-Atlantic path for Macedonia, and improve relations with its neighbors. The crisis is rooted in political problems. We are not dealing with an inter-ethnic crisis. Let’s hope things do not deteriorate,” Bushati concluded.
Some in Macedonia accuse Albania of meddling with its affairs and launching the so called “Tirana Platform” a list of political demands put forward by ethnic Albanian parties in the country, which Ivanov and Gruevski do not accept. The document was named like that due to the meeting between the leaders of the Albanian parties under the auspices of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in the capital of Albania, Tirana.
On January 7, the three major political parties in Albania agreed to a platform for negotiations on the new government. They demanded the recognition of Albanians living in Macedonia as a state making population, Albanian language and symbols.
