Albania

ALBANIA Albania sent additional soldiers in Afghanistan. The Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha participated in the ceremony for sending additional quota peacekeepers in Afghanistan. The additional quota of Albanian troops in Afghanistan will be led by Italian forces and that is why the Italian Ambassador Sabah Delia said that we …

MACEDONIA Opposition claims that the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord is a dead letter are unfounded, Macedonia’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdilakim Ademi says. The pact ended that year’s short-lived ethnic Albanian insurgency, promising the country’s largest minority official recognition of its language and culture and positive discrimination in state employment.

TIRANA Albanian villagers prevented Council of Europe (CoE) officials from conducting an investigation into the trafficking of human organs, Albanian media reported. Former Hague chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte mentioned in her book published last year that the home of the Katuci family and the village of Rripe in north …

PRIŠTINA The Kosovo Albanian government has passed a decision for the purchase of buildings in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels, to house its embassies. According to a statement released in Priština, the government adopted a request of its foreign ministry to start with buying only four buildings due to a …

Albania should block Macedonia’s NATO accession if Skopje continues to neglect its large Albanian community, the head of an ethnic Albanian party in Macedonia says. Menduh Thaci, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, told a Monday press conference that he considered asking Albanian Prime Minister Sali …

TIRANA, Albania Albania is ready to probe allegations of organ harvesting during the Kosovo conflict, but says any investigation on its territory must be carried out by domestic authorities. After a meeting with visiting Council of Europe special rapporteur Dick Marty, Justice Minister Enkeiled Alibeaj told reporters the government is …

Albanian officials are refusing to cooperate with a probe into alleged organ trafficking during the Kosovo conflict. Referring to the accusations, Albanian officials told investigator Dick Marty that “there can be no organ trade probe based on the accusations of Carla Del Ponte or Belgrade,” Serbia’s Beta news agency reports.

BELGRADE Chairman of the Coordination Body for Southern Serbia Milan Marković says the recent ethnic Albanian declaration “will not solve any problems”. The body deals with issues in the southern municipalities of Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa, where Serbia’s largest population of ethnic Albanians outside of Kosovo itself lives.

The new head of NATO has said that its Kosovo force could be completely withdrawn within four years. Anders Rasmussen, NATO’s new secretary general, said he wanted to see Kosovo Force, KFOR, “reduced to just a small reaction force, or out altogether” within his four-year term.

Ethnic Albanian officials in southern Serbia have launched a new initiative for the formation of a separate region in the Presevo Valley with its own institutions and organs. The proposal was raised in the assembly of the Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac municipalities and envisages the creation of an ethnic Albanian-led …