Cyprus-Forum.com

[Lit]

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO70445

By Kole Casule

SKOPJE, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Macedonia's leading academic institution said on Thursday it would revise a new encyclopedia after protests by the Balkan country's Albanian minority as well as in neighbouring Kosovo and Albania.

The row has highlighted the still fragile ethnic balance which led to fighting in Macedonia in 2001 and wars during the 1990s elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia.

The encyclopedia sparked outrage by saying ethnic Albanians settled the region in 16th century. Albanians say they were present long before Slavic tribes arrived centuries ago.

It also refers to Ali Ahmeti, leader of country's 2001 ethnic Albanian insurgency, as a war crimes suspect.

Ahmeti now heads the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, which is a junior partner in the government. The Netherlands-based UN war crimes court has investigated atrocities in the conflict but never implicated Ahmeti.

"While (the encyclopedia) will be partly rewritten, the edition will not be withdrawn," Georgi Stardelov, head of the editorial committee of Macedonia's Academy of Sciences and Arts, said in a statement.

The book was first promoted last week as a key national document at an event attended by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

Albanian media quoted Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha as saying the encyclopedia was "absurd and unacceptable" and said he warned Macedonian President Georgi Ivanov that no one can build "identity based on the forgery of history."

In Kosovo, which has unresolved border issues with Macedonia, parliament president Jakup Krasniqi said that Skopje was "isolating itself and making enemies."

Ethnic Albanians account for a quarter of the population in the nation of two million which peacefully seceded from Yugoslavia in 1992.

In 2001 ethnic Albanians launched an insurgency which ended after a Western-brokered peace deal disarmed rebels in exchange for broader Albanian rights and their inclusion in the society, something which riles many Macedonians who are Slavs.

Some Macedonian academics criticised the book as hastily prepared and politically motivated. "Any encyclopedia cannot be written under the influence of politicians," said Milan Gjurcinov, an Academy of Arts and Sciences member. "It is a book teeming with politics and that's not good."

Gjurcinov warned that a similar dispute between Serb and Croat academics in the 1980s contributed to the rise of nationalism that led to the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia. (Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic; additional reporting by Benet Koleka in Tirana and Fatos Bytyci in Pristina, editing by Adam Tanner and Dominic Evans)

[Lit]

DUI ready to leave FYRoM government

28 September 2009 | 17:46 | FOCUS News Agency
Skopje. If Ali Ahmeti decides we are ready to leave our functions, said deputy chairperson of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) Rafiz Aliti, leaving leader of the party to decide whether to stay in Macedonian government, A1 informed.
Ahmeti asked Nikola Gruevski to make public statement on the encyclopedia but it seemed not enough.
According to Aliti if leader of the DUI orders or asks the party to withdraw from the coalitional government he would be supported by all functionaries of the party and MPs from DUI.

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n195682

[Lit]

Albanian leader says 2001 FYRoM truce is broken. Blames revisionist Skopian academicians:
____

28 September 2009 | 08:22 | FOCUS News Agency
Skopje. The truce in 2001 between Macedonians and Albanians has been violated on behalf of the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts /MASA/ with the publishing the first Macedonian encyclopedia, leader of Democratic Union for Integration /DUI/ Ali Ahmeti stated, cited by Macedonian Dnevnik newspaper.
In Ahmeti’s words the truce has been violated by academician Blazhe Ristovski who is “irresponsible and unscrupulous soldier of the nation”.
Ahmeti urged the “political figures in the country to dissociate from the encyclopedia. Thus they will eliminate all doubts of the international factor and the ethnical Albanians as well as of our neighboring states that there aren’t political figures of the state behind that provocative text”, Ahmeti stated.

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n195640

[Lit]

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_con ... g=eng_news

Macedonia Academy pulls encyclopedia after protest

A new Macedonian encyclopedia is being withdrawn so that errors can be fixed _ including wrongly calling an ethnic Albanian leader a war crimes suspect.

The Macedonian Academy of Science and Art says in a statement that "mistakes will be corrected," but offers no explanation of how they occurred. The work, published two weeks ago, also refers to ethnic Albanians by a term they consider offensive.

Ethnic Albanians make up a quarter of Macedonia's 2 million people. In 2001 they launched an insurgency which ended after six months of fighting with government forces. Dozens of ethnic Albanians protested in the capital, Skopje, Thursday against the encyclopedia.

Macedonian intellectuals have also criticized it, as have the U.S., Britain and Greece.

[Lit]

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n195861

Vima: ‘Macedonian encyclopedia’ instrument for forging the history

Athens. The content of the encyclopedia published by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MASA) blew up the relations between the Slav Macedonians and Albanians and caused confusion even in Kosovo, Greek Vima newspaper writes.
The incidents that occurred during a football game in Pristina, when the Macedonian flag was burnt out as a mark of protest against the anti-Albanian statements included in the encyclopedia, is indicative. The newspaper also points out that MASA is considered the state body that launches the ideology of the “Macedonism”.
Macedonian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gregory Delavekuras, declared that the so-called “Macedonian encyclopedia” is “an instrument used to forge the history” and accused FYROM Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of being indifferent to the major criteria for FYROM’s EU pre-accession progress, and more precisely – the good neighborly relations.

[Lit]

http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/Articles/e ... KL1615.htm

In answer to a journalist’s question regarding the content of the new Encyclopedia of the Skopje Academy of Arts and Sciences financed by FYROM’s government, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mr. G. Delavekouras stated the following:

“This new attempt, this new tool for counterfeiting history by the government of FYROM is no surprise. After all, the work of the Skopje Academy is familiar to us.

The government of Mr. Gruevski is systematically promoting bigotry and nationalism. Mr. Gruevski is attempting to reinforce his profile on the domestic political stage by inventing enemies and aggravating his country’s relations with its neighbours.

FYROM’s Prime Minister is not ignorant of, but rather simply indifferent to, the basic criterion for FYROM’s progress towards accession to the EU, the criterion of good neighbourly relations. In this manner, he is moving his country’s people away from their Euro-atlantic future and creating conditions of regional instability.”

[Lit]

Former (FYR) Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski: Encyclopedia-anti Bulgarian, anti Albanian, anti Greek, pro Serbian in its basis

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n196060

Sofia. Macedonian encyclopedia is full of ideological prejudices, too many forged document, mystifications, invented places and an absolute revision of some parts of Macedonian history. The encyclopedia is an absolute rehabilitation of communist power and Macedonia’s communist period. This is what former Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski in an interview with FOCUS News Agency referring to the encyclopedia published by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MASA).

“All of the personalities in the time of communism are presented as positive. The encyclopedia not only rehabilitates the communism period but also Macedonia in the time of royal Yugoslavia,” Georgievski noted.
In his words “it seems like the book was written in 1978 in the time of Leonid Brezhnev, it is full of ideological and historical prejudices.”
Encyclopedia is anti Bulgarian, anti Albanian, anti Greek and pro Serbian in its basis, Ljubco Georgievski said. It can be seen from the way in which the book is presented and from the titles, the former minister informed.

[yialousa1971]

Skopians are like Turks trying to invent a history for themselves.

[Gabira]

Skopians are like Turks trying to invent a history for themselves.

Wow, that's deep yiahnisou