Creation of the association/community of Albanian municipalities (A/CAM) in south Serbia has been announced for Saturday as a response on the creation of the Association/Community of Serb municipalities in Kosovo.
The news that so called association/community of Albanian municipalities would be created on Saturday has divided representatives of Albanians in Serbia. Whereas Jonuz Musliu, the chairperson of the Albanian National Council and former commander of the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, announced the work on the draft of the A/CAM, as reciprocity to A/CSM in Kosovo, Shaip Kamberi the MP from the ranks of the Party for Democratic Action, stressed that local assemblies should first have a say about it since according to him “association is an assembly of municipalities, and not assembly of political parties”.
“The way it was proposed by Musliu, one can have impression that there is no will to deal with essential problems, but to make a picture in a sort of formal way that we are working something in order to gain virtual patriotic points. It all looks like political marketing of Jonuz Musliu Ragmi Mustafa (the Mayor of Presevo) and Nagip Arifi (the Mayor of Bujanovac),” said Kamberi to Politika, and added that local councilors from his party won’t take part in the work of local assemblies where decision would be made on creation of the A/CAM.
In the same time Musliu said to portal Sputnik that A/CAM has been supported by Pristina and Tirana, and added that Belgrade has no reasons to be against it, since Albanians from Presevo, Bujanovica and Medvedja “only want what Serbs received in Kosovo”. For the time being there are not announcements that protests will take place if Belgrade doesn’t recognize A/CAM, however Musliu said that this “topic will also be discussed if needed”.
Analysts in Serbia assessed that comparison between the A/CSM in Kosovo and the A/CAM is impossible since two minorities are not in the same position.
The chairperson of the Serbian Parliament’s Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun said that Serbs in Kosovo are second ranked citizens and that their safety and basic human rights are jeopardized, that thousands of them have been expelled and they have no economic perspective without Belgrade’s assistance, whereas Albanians in south Serbia are not faced with that sort of issues.
Professor at the Faculty for Security Milan Mijalkovski argues that even the title ‘Albanian municipalities’ is disputable since Albanians are not that big majority in Bujanovac, whereas in Medvedja they make only around 20 per cent of population.
Professor at the Faculty of Law ‘Union’ Bogoljub Milosavljevic said that Albanians in three municipalities in south Serbia are not in the worse position than other minorities in Serbia and believes that they can realize their rights within the frame of the national council. He further said that Albanians in Serbia don’t live only in Presevo or Bujanovac, but in Belgrade, Nis and other towns. “I would say that this association is only an effort to keep the side of Kosovo and exert a sort of pressure on Serbia during creation of the A/CSM,” said Milosavljevic.
When asked whether A/CAM could destabilize the south and present a security risk if Belgrade doesn’t recognize that association, Drecun replied that he doesn’t believe in such outcome and added that one should be cautious anyway since “every extreme political action with certain radical Islamist ideas” could create problems. “If it happens in the end, Serbia has legal mechanisms to react, as any other state,” said Drecun.
“They should not be given a chance to import unrests. Every possibility should be used to prevent activation of groups such as the so called Albanian National Army. They are now even threatening representatives of Pristina who have signed the agreement in Brussels as the basis for creation of the A/CSM,” concluded Mijalkovski.
