1—The creation of a Customs Union, which for a nine-year period will have the status of preferred partner in relations with the EU 2—For a two-year period, a regional VAT should be introduced to replace losses in customs revenue 3—Budgetary support over a three-year period for Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro... page 4

BY MARTIN LEKA The situation in the Balkans after Milošević’s “free fall” and the equally unimpeded arrival of Koštunica appears somewhat more conducive to achieving the region’s overall integration toward a more stable democracy. In this newly created situation, no one can deny Albania’s important role in regional integration—we would even call it a leading role—given our country’s geopolitical and strategic position. Regional initiatives, such as those promoting integration through the framework of the Stability Pact, are showing the first signs of “softening Balkan clashes,” where for many years people had known only how to fight one another: sometimes through a “cold war,” and sometimes at gunpoint. Now it seems that the stones are taking their places, to become a “stone wall” forever. In this new situation, the Albanian state’s policy to date has been realistic, in contrast to the extreme positions naturally called for by part of the Albanian opposition, as in the debate prompted by our country’s vote to admit the remaining Yugoslavia to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Through this act, and its policy up to now, the Albanian government showed that it favors building political barriers without any interest in overcoming them—barriers which, in the worst case, may be only an expression of an ultranationalist faction, pleasing only part of the political leadership, particularly in relations between Albania and Serbia, in the most revolutionary and Bolshevik manner. (Continued on page 4)

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SARAJEVO SUMMIT 1999

Tense situation in Skelë. Several teenagers set fire to a car with foreign license plates in response to the seizure of a giant speedboat page 14