Asking Albania for our land back ?

[Pelister]

I am asking these questions, because Macedonia is the ONLY multi-ethnic, multi-party State in the region. As a consequence a stable, independant and strong Macedonian State is essential toward the long term peace of the region. It serves as a buffer zone, in many ways, and giving pieces of land back to enlarge it, is likely to bring long term peace to the region.

What can Macedonia offer Albania in exchange for this land ?

Under what terms could Albania consider offering this land to join Macedonia ?

How would Macedonia compenstate the Albanian State ?

Is it a recipe for a more stable Macedonia, and therefore longer term peace in the region ?

What terms would Albanisn consider do you think ? What conditions for its return to Macedonia would Albania consider ?

(I am not for or against any or all of these, but I wanted to put them out there for people to discuss).


1. Macedonia could pay for the land +
2. Macedonia could compensate the Albanian state for revenue lost for a period of 15 years +
3. Regional autonomy for the small region, as part of Macedonia +
4. All Albanians and Macedonians represented in the Macedonian parliament +
5. The consent of its inhabitants (Albanian and Macedonian) +
6. Free Trade and zero tariffs with Albanian State +
7. Low taxes for Albanian products +
8. Albanian language made an official minority language of Macedonia (if not already) +
9. Open, unrestricted access to its resources, including water +

[Big Bad Sven]

How about we first get Albania to recognize our country?

But to go back on topic, i would love to see all of Ohrid lake return to macedonia. It is a great shame that Ohrid and Prespa lake are divided away from us

[Risto the Great]

Changing borders in the Balkans is a dangerous business.
Being a poor country does not afford Macedonia many serious options.

[VMRO]

Pelister, i don't know if you remember MANU offering Tetovo, Gostivar and Debar for the Macedonian parts in Albania, it was an idea a few years ago. The Macedonian population around Tetovo would be moved to the new Macedonian location around Prespa, the Macedonian part given to Albania last century.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...age&q=&f=false

Storm Over Macedonia Partition Plan: A proposal to divide up Macedonia along ethnic lines has provoked outrage Posted June 7, 2001
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive...0606_2_eng.txt
Storm Over Macedonia Partition Plan

A proposal to divide up Macedonia along ethnic lines has provoked outrage
By Veton Latifi in Skopje (BCR No. 253, 6-Jun-01)

While Macedonian troops battle it out with Albanian guerrillas in the north, a fierce political conflict has broken out in the capital over a proposal to partition Macedonia.

The bombshell proposal was lobbed by Georgi Efremov, chairman of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Macedonia, ASAM, who suggested that the best way of ending strife between Macedonian and Albanian communities was to carve up the country into two entities.

According to this plan, Albanians would settle in the western regions of Gostivar, Tetovo, and Debar which would then join Albania itself at a later date. In exchange, Albania would hand over to Macedonia the town of Pogradec and the surrounding area near Prespa Lake, where a small Macedonian minority lives.

The exchange should be completed peacefully in three months, the academy said.

Efremov described his plan as a "document for the salvation of Macedonia". He said that after the recent fighting in Tetovo and elsewhere, Albanians and Macedonians could no longer live in peace.

The proposal enraged large sections of political opinion. Albanian minority parties united in opposition, parties representing the Macedonian majority were split, thus endangering the "grand coalition" set up a few weeks ago with international blessing to guide the country through its crisis.

Among the few political leaders who refrained from denouncing the plan were Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, the leader of the Macedonian VMRO-DPMNE party, and parliamentary speaker Stojan Andov, a member of the Liberal Party, a junior member of the coalition.

Strong opposition came from Branko Crvenkovski who heads SDSM, Socialist Democratic Alliance of Macedonia, the other major Macedonian party. He called the ASAM plan "an incitement for civil war and suicide for Macedonia". Crvenkovski favours pursuing current negotiations on giving ethnic Albanians greater civic rights and recognising Albanian as an official language.

The ASAM plan has brought unexpected harmony to the two main Albanian parties, the DPA, Democratic Party of Albanians and PDP, Party of Democratic Prosperity, which until now had been locked in bitter feuds. Both dismissed the partition plan as "unacceptable and ridiculous".

The president of the Albanian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ylli Popa, also rejected the proposal. "Inter ethnic problems cannot be solved by exchange of territories and populations," he said. "The only solution to the Macedonia crisis is to respect the rights of Albanians living there."

Macedonian political feuding intensified after the daily, Vecer, which is close to VMRO-DPMNE, published a map of the planned exchange. When Crvenkovski threatened to walk out of coalition, Georgievski said he would not mind if the alliance did break up.

After lack of support from the Macedonian parties and outright rejection by their Albanian counterparts, ASAM Chairman Efremov, sought to distance himself from his own plan, saying it had been misinterpreted.

Efremov said it was only one of 25 possible ways of solving the crisis and that it was not an official ASAM proposal, just the personal view of some of its members.

Partition has been discussed several times since Macedonia became independent a decade ago.

When the NLA first emerged at the beginning of this year, there were rumours that its main goal was the federalisation of Macedonia. But a month later, it backed away from the partition idea, saying it supported the territorial integrity of Macedonia.

Instead, the NLA called for Albanians to be elevated to the status of nation in the country's constitution.

During the last decade, the two main Macedonian parties have argued fiercely about the country's integrity and sovereignty. LSDM has accused the VMRO-DPMNE of working to hand over parts of Macedonia to Bulgaria. While the latter has charged the former of trying to draw Macedonia back into the Yugoslav federation.

The partition proposal, no matter whether it is ASAM policy or the idea of some of its members, might be a severe blow to the country at a time when all Balkan nations are oriented towards European integration.

If the plan frustrates the political process, the EU might decide to review the validity of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Macedonia, signed in Luxembourg on April 9. It could also undermine the support that Macedonia has received until now. But no such measures are foreseen by the EU at present.

The fact that Efremov is close to the VMRO-DPMNE and that his plan was not rejected outright by some politicians might indicate other motives behind the proposal. Whether it was a test of public opinion, an outright provocation or a serious project, the plan has certainly shifted attention away from the fighting in the north. It has also delayed political dialogue between Albanians and Macedonians on resolving their present differences.

Veton Latifi is a political analyst and IWPR assistant editor in Macedonia.

Macedonia: Did Nationalist Leaders Plan To Divide Country Along Ethnic Lines?
June 07, 2005
By Ulrich Buechsenschuetz



Ever since fighting broke out between the ethnic Albanian insurgents of the National Liberation Army (UCK) and the Macedonian security forces in early 2001, there have been persistent but unconfirmed reports that some politicians in Macedonia had a hidden agenda to partition the country along ethnic lines in order to consolidate their own power.

The most prominent politicians widely suspected of working on such division plans were former Prime Minister and former Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO-DPMNE) Chairman Ljubco Georgievski, who governed the country from 1998 until 2002. The other main suspect was Democratic Party of the Albanians (PDSH) Chairman Arben Xhaferi.

When the VMRO-DPMNE and the PDSH formed a coalition in 1998, there was speculation about what prompted two rivals like the Macedonian Georgievski and the Albanian Xhaferi to collaborate. Both had a reputation of being nationalists, and analysts have repeatedly raised the question whether there was more to cement their good working relationship outside their shared conservative, strictly anticommunist ideologies.

At the height of the conflict, in May 2001, the Georgi Efremov, then-president of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), proposed to cede the heavily Albanian-populated areas of western Macedonia around Debar and Tetovo to Albania, while Macedonian-populated areas on the western bank of Lake Ohrid in Albania were to be added to Macedonia. The scattered Albanian population living throughout Macedonia was to be "resettled."

At that time, there were widespread rumors that Efremov's plan was a trial balloon launched on Georgievski's behalf. Given the openly hostile public reaction to that plan, Georgievski subsequently denied that he considered any territorial swap or the division of Macedonia along ethnic lines.

But in late March 2003, Georgievski himself wrote in a column that changing the existing the borders in the Balkans might be a way to resolve interethnic problems. Shortly after that editorial, he followed with another, in which he discussed the question whether Albanians should be "resettled" in order to "save" the ethnically mixed cities of Skopje, Kicevo, Kumanovo, and Struga for the Macedonian nation.

Two years after these editorials appeared, in late June, Xhaferi told Kosovar television broadcasters that he and Georgievski repeatedly discussed the issue of dividing Macedonia along ethnic lines while they were in power. The interview was subsequently republished by two Kosovar dailies.

Xhaferi reportedly said that already in 1998, he and Georgievski started to talk about a plan to peacefully divide Macedonia. Both agreed that that a multiethnic society could not function and that such societies were "fictions" of the international community.
Georgievski has denied that he and his colleague discussed the division of Macedonia before the 2001 conflict.

Xhaferi also said they discussed a possible division with politicians from neighboring countries, most notably with the late Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Xhaferi added, however, that he and Georgievski did not agree on concrete modalities, not least because of the war in neighboring Kosova in 1999. From Xhaferi's point of view, the peaceful division would have avoided bloodshed in Macedonia.

In a press release in response to Xhaferi's interview, Georgievski denied that he and his colleague discussed the division of Macedonia before the 2001 conflict. "We talked about the issue for the first time when the daily 'Vecer' published a text on the 'Exchange of Territories and Populations between Macedonia and Albania' in May 2001," Georgievski said. "At that time, Mr. Xhaferi did not want to discuss this problem and the conversation was over."

Georgievski's new party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization -- People's Party (VMRO-NP), said it does not support any division plans. For VMRO-NP acting Chairwoman Vesna Janevska, Xhaferi's interview was simply the beginning of the PDSH's campaign for the 2006 parliamentary elections. Janevska added that the VMRO-NP supports the 2001 Ohrid peace agreement as well as a multiethnic Macedonia. "This is the party's one and absolute position," she said. "Multiethnic states are a reality, and we are convinced that radicalism does not have a place in Macedonia any longer."

Xhaferi's interview seems to have taken even his own party by surprise. A PDSH spokesman said his party will wait for the video recordings to arrive from Prishtina to see whether the reports in the print media correspond with what Xhaferi said on TV or whether his interview could be interpreted in a different way.

Ermira Mehmeti of Macedonia's governing ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (BDI) said if Xhaferi now believes that a multiethnic Macedonia has no future, he must explain why he signed the Ohrid peace agreement -- which provides for the consolidation of a multiethnic society -- in the first place.

In the meantime, Public Prosecutor Stavre Zikov said his office will scan Xhaferi's interview to see whether there is any reason to take legal action against the PDSH leader.

[Pelister]

I did not know about that offer Vmro. Just goes to show what Macedonians will do.

I also was not aware that Albania does not recognize us ? Can this be right ? What are they waiting for ? It would benefit us a great deal to have Albania recognize us, if it is not the case already.

I would like to see all of Ohrid return to us too. I guess what I wanted to show was that land can be "negotiated". I feel as though Macedonia deserves to have this land returned formally, because I an certain that the Macedonian model is better for peace in the region, and the more that model takes in the better for all.

[VMRO]

Originally Posted by Pelister

I did not know about that offer Vmro. Just goes to show what Macedonians will do.

I also was not aware that Albania does not recognize us ? Can this be right ? What are they waiting for ? It would benefit us a great deal to have Albania recognize us, if it is not the case already.

I would like to see all of Ohrid return to us too. I guess what I wanted to show was that land can be "negotiated". I feel as though Macedonia deserves to have this land returned formally, because I an certain that the Macedonian model is better for peace in the region, and the more that model takes in the better for all.

Out of all the parts Macedonia can reclaim back and have the highest chance of getting is Mala Prespa and Debar regions, followed by Gorno Vardar under Serbia and Pirin Macedonia in 3rd place.

The Macedonian part under Albania was given in a different agreement and one day i hope we can challenge this.

I cannot wait to see the day when Macedonia will be united in it's true borders, i just hope to live to see that day.

[King Makedon]

why not? but i don't think the answer will be positive

[George S.]

it spells trouble to ask for something that was illegally partitioned in 1913.why put a lot of cobditions on it.it was our land in the first place.Maybe with recognition they might secede.

[Rogi]

Giving up Macedonian land to get Macedonian land, as was suggested by MANU and supported by Ljubco Geotgievski, is an absolute joke.

Cut off your leg and give it to me, so I can return your hand. An absurdity.

Furthermore, most of Macedonia's drinking water comes from that region that those idiots suggested we 'exchange'.

[King Makedon]

We can also ask the Greek if they return our lands back. Their state is bankrupt. Maybe then our state can arrange a fond for helping poor Greeks in case of returning our lands.