Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-255"
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"en.20010403.10.2-255"2
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". – Mr President, I very much welcome the opportunity of answering this question and I am grateful for what you said a moment or two ago. My time of departure is largely determined by the fact that I took until 5.00 a.m. this morning to get back from Macedonia, which is the subject of this question.
As the honourable Member knows, the governments in Skopje and Belgrade recently reached agreement on border demarcation between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The European Union very much welcomes that agreement. Since the appearance of the armed Albanian extremists, the European Union has made clear its very strong support for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and we have made clear as well our support for the inviolability of borders. We have condemned the violence and we have argued passionately, as was the case for example at the European Council last weekend, that grievances must be addressed through democratic institutions. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is moving towards Europe. As the honourable Member will know, we are looking forward to signing a stabilisation and association agreement with the Macedonian leadership at the beginning of next week.
The European Union has been intensively involved in trying to manage and prevent this crisis. We have all worked very closely together – the Presidency, the High Representative, the Member States and the Commission – and we have also worked closely with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. My latest trip to Skopje was yesterday. I went for the second time in about ten days with the High Representative. It was his third trip in that period. We have made clear once again that the Albanian population need to see the real opportunity for promoting their interests through political means. We are very pleased at the attempt made by President Trajkovski to launch a process of dialogue in Skopje. The first meeting of the political leaders that he brought together took place yesterday. We are ready to help in that process of dialogue but I have to make it clear that we do not think it is our role to mediate. It is our role to assist people in taking things forward but it is not our job to take the responsibility off their shoulders.
We appealed yesterday to the PDP Party to attend meetings of the dialogue in future. We had individual meetings with all the party leaders. All of them expressed their commitment to democracy. All of them expressed their commitment to dialogue. All of them expressed their commitment to joining the European family. So we now look to them to make good the undertakings that they gave us yesterday. We hope that they will talk to one another through the fora created by President Trajkovski. We hope that all of them, including the opposition, will participate in the signing ceremony of the stabilisation and association agreement next week.
We have said that we stand ready in the Commission to support the process of building a successful, multi-ethnic Community through our CARDS Programme and so on. We have made it clear to the Albanian leaders in Kosovo that the donor community's patience is not unlimited and that they have to make clear their own absolute abhorrence of violence in the attempt to move away from extremism. I think we have been doing all we can, but the political leaders in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia now have to show the leadership which is going to be required in order to get their country through this difficult period."@en1
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