The Mayor of the Presevo municipality, a part of Serbia’s southern region of Presevo Valley, said late on Thursday that his fellow ethnic Albanians were against the exchanges of territories with Kosovo, “even if that means we will stay where we are now,” the Beta news agency reported.
Sqiprim Arifi said that Presevo Valley ethnic Albanians “want a strong Kosovo, and its north (with a Serb majority) even if the price we have to pay is to remain under (the control of) Serbia.”
Arifi commented an idea about the lands’ swap that meant the exchange of four Serb-dominated municipalities in the Kosovo north for the borough of Presevo, excluding the other two from the Valley, Bujanovac, and Medvedja.
The ethnic Albanians create a vast majority in Presevo, they make up above 50 percent of Bujanovac population, while in Medvedja, the Serbs are a substantial majority.
In recent weeks, ahead of the new round of the European Union-facilitated Belgrade – Pristina dialogue on normalisation of relations, the ideas of the partition of Kosovo, the exchange of territories, border correction and alike came from both capitals.
Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci advocates the inclusion the Presevo Valley on the dialogue agenda, saing its ssecession from Serbia and joining Kosovo was a solution. Serbia’s counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, however, talked about the separation with Albanians, without any detail.
Last Wednesday, the Pristina Zeri daily had reported that six Serbian experts reviewed a possible exchange of the Presevo municipality in southern Serbia for four Serb-majority districts in northern Kosovo.
They said that those four municipalities had a population of 42,000 which is 40 percent more than Presevo and a 1,000 square kilometres more territory.
Arifi earlier said that “under no circumstances, a single village should be separated from the whole of Presevo (Valley). That’s senseless, and it violates the Republic of Kosovo.”
“We will all be a part of the Republic of Kosovo, or we will all stay in Serbia,” Arifi reiterated.
The ethnic Albanians from Presevo Valley have been complaining about their status in Serbia, saying that Belgrade does not even honour the country’s constitution and laws which stipulate that the participation in local administration should follow the population ethnic breakdown. They also say that there are problems in education, the lack of textbooks, etc.
Following the war in Kosovo 1998-1999, where the Kosovo Liberation Army was formed, the Albanians in Presevo established the Liberation Army of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja with an aim to secede from Serbia and join Kosovo.
They launched a serious of attacks on Serbia’s forces, but the Western countries condemned the attacks and described it as the “extremism” and use of “illegal terrorist actions” by the group.
Belgrade contained the violence in 2001.
