MACEDONIAN ALBANIAN PARTY TO JOIN KING LEKA'S "PAN-ALBANIAN MOVEMENT"-PAPER
Fakti - September 29, 2004

The Democratic Party of Albanians (PDSh) will join the royal movement of King Leka the First, who is planning to form a pan-Albanian movement in the Balkans, PDSh sources, which insist on remaining anonymous, have told Fakti .

According to these sources, the PDSh will be the first political party from Macedonia to join this movement because of very close relations between Arben Xhaferi and the Albanian king, Leka the First. It is expected that more political parties from Kosova (Kosovo), Eastern Kosova (area of southern Serbia, outside the administrative border of Kosovo, with a significant ethnic Albanian population), and Montenegro will join the movement. At the same time, this movement will be open to non-political organizations, especially those gathering intellectuals, from all Albanian-inhabited territories and the diaspora.

King Leka is trying to expand his movement outside Albania, as he thinks that he enjoys authority and respect among Albanians who live outside Albania's borders.

Our sources say that, if such a movement is formed, its name will be the Pan-Albanian Movement.

PDSh spokesman Sulejman Rushiti declined to comment on these reports yesterday.

However, our sources say that this idea was born in May in Tetove (Tetovo) at a meeting between PDSh Chairman Arben Xhaferi and King Leka the First.

These party sources say that, since then, regular meetings between them have been going on, mostly in the Albanian capital of Tirana.

The initial aim of this movement will be the "spiritual unification" of Albanians in the Balkans through closer cooperation and the destruction of "artificial barriers" between them.

However, according to the same sources, this idea is consistent with the PDSh position that, if the Macedonians refuse to live on equal terms with the Albanians, solutions that involve the formation of ethnic states will be taken into consideration.

Indirectly, that view is also shared by the royal movement of King Leka in Albania.

According to our sources, cooperation between various political and non-political entities from the Albanian-inhabited territories within the royal movement would be a preparation for "the eventual ethnic epilogue" of the Balkan turbulence.

"The majority of Albanians want all-Albanian unification. However, such processes are still very painful. Therefore, we need to prepare the terrain in order to make it as painless as possible. Such unification has turned out to be very difficult even in the case of a superpower, such as Germany, let alone in the case of Albanians," Fakti's sources said, commenting on the aims of the Pan-Albanian Movement.

Source: Fakti, Skopje, in Albanian 29 Sep 04 p 4

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