Hague Exerting Pressure on Macedonia Over Kosovo

Hague "exerting pressure" on Macedonia over Kosovo - paper
BBC Monitoring Europe - Political - January 22, 2005, Saturday

Text of Ljupco Pancevski report entitled "Pressure on Macedonia on eve of resolving Kosovo's status" published by the Macedonian newspaper Makedonija Denes on 21 January

Makedonija Denes has learned from well-informed sources that the Hague tribunal is using the Ljuboten case to exert political pressure on Macedonia.

The events in Ljuboten could be used as a dangerous tool for exerting pressure on Macedonia in conditions when the European Union does not have a clearly defined official position on resolving the Kosovo issue.

Our source says that the relation between Ljuboten and Kosovo is part of the European Union's strategy for solving the Kosovo problem. This source says that the European Union is in a panic on the eve of resolving the Kosovo issue, for which it currently does not have a defined position. But it has prepared three possible scenarios: Kosovo obtains independence, which the Albanians from the whole region want; second, Kosovo remains part of Serbia, which is what Belgrade is insisting on; and the third possibility, which is most acceptable to the EU, is for Kosovo to obtain conditional independence.

Through the Hague tribunal, the European Union wants to distance Macedonia, and especially the Macedonian citizens from an ethnic Albanian background, from the events in Kosovo, the resolution of which is still not clear. It is for this reason that the EU is implementing the same formula that the tribunal has been implementing in Croatia and Serbia, countries whose membership in the EU is dependent on cooperation with the Hague tribunal.

Our source says that the aim of this is for Macedonia and its government to be kept under constant pressure with comments on possible new indictments related to the only case in which the Hague tribunal is interested: Ljuboten.

The EU is also in a panic over the possibility of the United States deciding to take unilateral measures on the Ljuboten and Kosovo issues, as they did when they recognized Macedonia under its constitutional name, especially because members of the "Amber Fox" mission participated in gathering evidence and exhuming the bodies of the civilians killed in Ljuboten.

"It is here that I believe that we should look for the reasons for the Hague tribunal's decision not to raise indictments for the Lipkovo dam, the Mavrovo construction workers, and the 12 kidnapped Macedonians cases in the aforementioned theses as published ," our source said.

SOURCE: Makedonija Denes, Skopje, in Macedonian 0000 gmt 21 Jan 05 p3