University Non Grata

The already completed job of making up the government was again halted after the ethnic Albanian parties announced that they would open their university in Tetovo on December 17 regardless of what the authorities thought about the idea. Several days before the deadline, the authorities, headed by Crvenkovski, said what they thought about the idea. They promised that they would at all costs prevent the celebration marking the opening of the Tetovo Albanian University, which they qualified as an "illegal initiative".

Although there had been behind-the-scenes efforts to resolve the situation, the state decided to show its might on December 15. The police padlocked the building of the future University's Administration Building in Tetovo and confiscated all of its documents. According to some, the Chairman of the University's Initiating Committee, Dr. Fadilj Sulejmani, was arrested, while others say that he was taken to the police station for a "talk". Albanian party leaders claimed that the Macedonian Interior Ministry action was much broader and that numerous officials and activists of the future university were "taken in for a talk" throughout Western Macedonia that day.

At a news conference held immediately after the police action, Arben Dzaberi, one of the leaders of a radical (Albanian) Party of Democratic Prosperity (PDP) faction, said that the Skopje authorities were showing "signs of frustration" and that they would have difficulty refuting accusations of repression in the future. Dzaberi claimed that the Albanians in Macedonia did not want a "political university", just the possibility to have their children educated at home.

Albanians in Macedonia were allegedly advised by Tirana to adhere to the system's institutions, but there are fears that the "Tetovo University" and the authorities' adamant stand might alter such an orientation and turn the Albanian population toward more radical options. Moreover, some of them, whom Skopje considers "cooperative" partners, have the habit of occasionally indicating such a possibility in their public statements. The Macedonian public was recently quite agitated by PDP leader and Deputy Assembly Speaker Abdurahman Aliti, who said during his visit to Pristina that the "Albanians' long-time ideal is to live in one state and no one has the right to dispute this". This statement coincided with Albanian Prime Minister Aleksandar Mexi's allegation that the national liberation struggle in Albania failed to achieve two goals: democracy and the full independence of the country and the Albanian people. For, as Mexi warned, Kosovo, Albanians in Macedonia and in Greece have remained outside Albania.

The conflict over the "Tetovo University" seems to have again drawn Macedonia closer to those dangerous situations in which any uncautious move can destroy all that has been achieved over the past few years by the state's persistent evasion of war and inter-ethnic conflicts. Some Skopje analysts claim that all of this is just a "rehearsal" and a definite sign that the new Macedonian government will face much more serious problems than the previous one. For example, the first job that awaits it is the confiscation of matches.