The Fear of Facing Each Other

Both sides are aware of its necessity and of a possible compromise. Is there anyone prepared for it at this moment, when war is still raging in B&H, when the Sixth Fleet is in the Adriatic and war threatens to spread in Serbia as well? Wouldn't a compromise with the ethnic Albanians represent another defeat for the Serbian regime, for it has been filling the heads of its subjects that it would never yield before the demands of "the secessionists". Neither are Kosovo Albanians at this moment prepared for major concessions. Especially because - as it is being claimed - they have been excluded from all segments of life. They say that Serbia itself must provide the preconditions for serious dialogue by reexamining its measures against Kosovo, to start with.

Nevertheless, neither side is hiding that the fact that they are being strongly pressured by the international community to start negotiations through compromise and without bloodshed. For the time being, there is not a trace of the long announced dialogue. Both the authorities in Belgrade and the Albanians in Pristina, in their communication by fax, telegram and the press, express their "good will" in a way that makes it clear that the whole thing will show no result.

The Serbian Government's most recent reply stresses that "the representatives of the Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo and Metohija are not observing their obligation of loyalty to the state in which they live, as is stipulated in international legal acts, but are insistently trying to achieve their secessionist goals, i.e. the secession of this province from the Republic of Serbia and the FRY". The rejection of the claim that Kosovo was forcibly annexed is interpreted by the circles close to the Coordinating Board of the Albanians' political parties as proof that the Serbian regime is not prepared to face the truth, and that there is no politically relevant ethnic-Albanian organization that would ever let Kosovo remain under Serbian yoke".

"There is no Constitutional provision, in any constitution in the world, which allows one federal unit to abolish another. Serbia deployed military forces in Kosovo, abolished the Parliament and the Government and all other institutions. Is that not a classic example of annexation and occupation?", says Mr. Fehmi Agani, Vice-President of the Democratic Union of Kosovo.

The Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo also think that in the event the Serbian regime "accepts dialogue as suggested by Mr. Rugova, president of the so-called Republic of Kosovo, it would mean that Serbia accepts the legalization of the Kosovo state.