EX MACEDONIAN PRESIDENT: ALBANIANS WANT TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL PEOPLE

BELGRADE, March 29 (Hina) - A former Macedonian president, Kiro Gligorov, believes that extremist groups of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia do not want civil rights but that they are fighting for the proclamation of Albanians as a constitutional people (in Macedonia). In an interview he gave to the Belgrade weekly 'Vreme', Gligorov claimed that all the operations of Albanians were directed primarily at the West and NATO so that they could attract attention to the unsolved Albanian issue in the Balkans. "Therefore, Albanians are promoting an idea about the alleged need to hold an international conference on the Albanian issue. All what is going on now in Macedonia is not the fight for the civil rights but the insistence that the Albanian population be proclaimed a constitutional nation through the changes to the Constitution," Gligorov asserted. He was against the establishment of an independent Kosovo and assessed that clashes in southern Serbia and Macedonia were the result of Albanians' realisation that they had lost the support in the international community. He maintained that Albanians were increasingly disturbed with the fact that recently Belgrade and Macedonia had signed an agreement on the border between Yugoslavia and Macedonia, "which practically means that nobody without passport will be able any more to pass this frontier, as it has so far been the case." Gligorov said it was a positive fact for him that "terrorist groups that arrived from Kosovo failed to stir up the rebellion of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia." (hina) sb ms