DECEMBER 2007

Albania in nuclear export scheme

John Hooper in Rome
Saturday November 10, 2007
The Guardian

It is one of the poorest countries in Europe, which still endures acute electricity shortages and almost daily blackouts, even in the capital.

Still, Albania is undaunted. In a proposal that has alarmed neighbouring Greece but elicited interest from Italy, the country is proposing to host nuclear plants that would supply electricity across the Adriatic by way of an underwater cable.

The news emerged at an Italo-Albanian business conference in Tirana, where the prime minister, Sali Berisha, said he aimed to turn Albania into a regional energy superpower - a glorified socket on the Adriatic capable of supplying cheap electricity to Balkan neighbours and Italy.

He said the government was consulting contractors such as Westinghouse. Zana Gonxholi, an economic adviser to the Albanian government, said a Franco-Swiss consortium had prepared a plan for a nuclear plant at Drac on the north coast.

An Albanian civil nuclear programme could not only help the country fill its own gaping power shortfalls, but get around popular resistance in Italy to nuclear generation. A referendum there in 1987 led to a five-year moratorium on nuclear power, and no government has since dared reopen the issue. But the idea has prompted alarm in neighbouring Greece.

The daily La Stampa yesterday reported that talks had been held with the Italian grid operator, Terna, on linking the Italian and Albanian electricity networks. Pier Ferdinando Casini, a leading candidate to take over from Silvio Berlusconi as leader of the Italian right, said the chance "must not be allowed to slip".

The prime minister, Romano Prodi, is due to visit Albania for talks early next month.

***********************************************************************

ALBANIAN VIDEO ARTIST

Preview

Saturday November 3, 2007
The Guardian

Anri Sala
London

Video artist Anri Sala is drawn to those living on the periphery of life: vagrants, ex-army combatants, obsessive compulsives, the kind who cannot or will not conform. His films have the grainy, jittery look of documentary footage, yet the narrative is anything but. In 2003 he exhibited a film at the Venice Biennale in which the camera was trained on a tramp dozing on a church pew. As tourists and worshippers shuffled passed we watched his head as it jerked and lolled in a fitful sleep. Born in Tirana, Albania, Sala now lives in Berlin and Paris and his new exhibition is a combination of photographs and films that continue to view the world through the eyes of the dispossessed and rootless.
Jessica Lack

*************************************************************************

In September last Kosovo bomb blast kills two.

By Fred Attewill and agencies
Monday September 24, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Two people were killed and 10 injured after a bomb ripped through a shopping mall in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, today. Police and Nato-led peacekeeping troops sealed off the scene in the city centre after the device exploded in the early hours of the morning. The explosion scattered glass and debris from at least a dozen shops on Pristina's Bill Clinton Boulevard, and caused a building to collapse. The blast comes amid growing concerns over the future of the province, which remains officially part of Serbia after the 1999 Nato bombing campaign that forced the withdrawal of Serbian troops.

A police spokesman, Veton Elshani, said: "We do not know the motive for the moment and we do not know who would stand behind this explosion." He said most of the victims were injured by a concrete block falling after the blast. Last month, police arrested several ethnic Albanians working in the mall who were suspected of involvement in the shooting of a policeman. Frustration is rising in Kosovo as the dream of independence - supported by the ethnic Albanians who make up 90% of the population - appears to slip away. The Kosovan prime minister, Agim Ceku, has lost all political credibility at home after putting his trust in the west - particularly the US - to deliver independence. Last week, Wolfgang Ischinger, the top EU negotiator in talks on the province's future, said he would rather "talk about a strong supervised status" than independence.

Later this week, the first face-to-face talks between Serbia and Albania are scheduled to take place in New York. The "troika" - the EU, the US and Russia - is to report back to the UN by December 10, when a decision is due to made. Independence was once thought to be inevitable, but a newly resurgent Russia has strongly backed Serbian opposition and many analysts believe the west lacks the stomach for a diplomatic showdown on the issue.

***************************************************************************

Only a few days before the bomb exploded in Kosovo: Drifting from promise of independence

Once seen as inevitable, Kosovo's separation from Serbia now seems a fading prospect

Mark Tran
Wednesday September 19, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The Serbian foreign minister had good reason to sound relaxed and confident during an appearance before the media and foreign policy experts in London this week. Vuk Jeremic, who was in Britain for the latest round of diplomacy on Kosovo, and the government in Belgrade are sitting pretty because the prospect of independence for the Serbian province, once apparently a certainty, is receding fast.

It appears now that Kosovo, which has been administered by the UN for the past eight years since a Nato bombing campaign forced Serbia's withdrawal in 1999, will remain in political limbo. The fear is that simmering tensions will boil over into violence as Kosovans see the promise of independence snatched away. For the Albanians, who make up 90% of Kosovo's population of 2 million, the whole episode has been a diplomatic disaster. The Kosovan prime minister, Agim Ceku, who was in London today to see a "troika" of envoys from the US, Russia and the EU, has lost all political credibility at home after putting his trust in the west - particularly the US - to deliver the prize of independence.

The latest blow to Mr Ceku came from Wolfgang Ischinger, the top EU negotiator and the German ambassador to the UK. In an interview with the Independent, he seemed to sharply pull the rug from under the feet of the Kosovan leadership. "I would leave open independence. I would rather talk about a strong supervised status," he said. Analysts say the remarks have had a dreadful impact and will reinforce fears among a growing number of Albanians that they have been led down the garden path by their western "friends".

All this seems a very long way from the upbeat predictions from US officials at the start of the year, culminating in a pledge by George Bush in June. During a visit to Albania, where he received a hero's welcome, the US president backed the goal of independence for Kosovo and said the matter would be put before the UN security council, along the lines of a plan drawn up by the former Finnish president Marti Ahtisaari. The resolution never saw the light of day, shelved repeatedly because of Russia, which has chosen Kosovo as one of the fields in which to flex its new diplomatic muscle.

At the G8 meeting in Germany in July, the west refused to call Russia's bluff and France muddied the waters by proposing more time for more talks. This is not what Mr Ahtisaari would have predicted when he went to Belgrade in 2005 and told the Serbian government that Kosovo's independence was inevitable.

This week's discussions between the troika and, separately, Serbian and Albanian leaders in London are a prelude to the first face-to-face talks between the two parties, scheduled for September 28 in New York on the margins of the UN assembly. The troika is due to report back to the UN by December 10, when the west says a decision must be taken. But the December deadline is likely to come and go without a diplomatic resolution any closer. The west has lost the stomach for this particular fight. After sounding so gung-ho on independence for Kosovo, the Bush administration has other more pressing worries - Iraq, Iran, the Middle East - and seems no longer willing to take on the Kremlin over the issue. In Britain, another strong advocate of independence, a changing of the guard has not worked to Kosovo's advantage. Tony Blair, for whom Kosovo was a test case for liberal interventionism, is gone and the old Kosovo hands at the Foreign Office are also moving on.

The 27-member EU is divided: Spain, Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus and Romania are among those against independence, either because of their proximity to the Balkans or due to fears that it could encourage separatists within their own borders. With EU unity now at stake, Britain will be reluctant to press for independence as it would shatter a common position. As political paralysis persists in the west, Kosovo is likely to drift into partition, with the Serbs in northern Kosovo looking to Belgrade, and the area increasingly becoming a no-go area for the Albanian majority. Meanwhile, Albanians will chafe at being stuck in an international no man's land, raising the risk that Nato soldiers or international officials will become targets of Albanian frustration.

Publicly, Belgrade rejects partition, as Mr Jeremic again asserted yesterday at the Chatham House foreign affairs thinktank. But that is politically more acceptable than independence.

The best outcome for stability in the west Balkans is for the EU to recognise Kosovo, at once releasing all of the frustration felt by the Albanian population. The EU would also be doing Belgrade a favour - although Serbian politicians would never admit it openly - as it would take a festering problem off their hands. But the indications are that the EU will fail to meet what it has described as its biggest challenge.

HYDROELECTRIC PLANT AND UNDERSEA GRID WITH ITALY

TIRANA, Albania-Albania's government approved a new hydroelectric plant
project and an undersea grid connection with Italy on Wednesday, in deals
worth €1.3 billion (US$1.9 billion) and aimed at addressing acute power
shortages in this tiny Balkan country.

Italy's Tassara-Geotecna Progetti-Kinglor, or TGK, was awarded a concession
to build a 550 megawatt hydropower station costing around €600 million
(US$875 million) in Skavica on the Drini River, about 200 kilometers (120
miles) northeast of the capital, Tirana.

The government also approved building an undersea power connection with
Italy. The €700 million (US$1 billion) deal was awarded to ASG Power SA as
part of a related €2.5 billion (US$3.6 billion) project to build a power
plant and a re-gasification terminal at Seman, 100 kilometers (62 miles)
southwest of Tirana.

Further details about the two projects, including completion dates, were not
immediately available.


netherlands give aid to the Albanian Navy
November 13, 2007 11:12 AM

TIRANA, Albania-The Netherlands will give aid worth €11 million (US$16 million) to the Albanian navy to help the Balkan country integrate its forces with NATO, Albania's Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The package includes a military patrol boat and a new shipyard to build
three more, ministry spokesman Igli Hasani said.

Albania, which has small troop contingents in Afghanistan and Iraq, hopes to be invited to join NATO at the organization's April 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania. The Dutch aid is part of an Albanian €30 million (US$44 million) naval development project. The shipyard will be at Pasha Liman, 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of the capital Tirana, and would also support NATO vessels.

THE WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
14 November 2007 - A witness who failed to appear before the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia during the trial of the former prime minister of Kosovo has been arrested on contempt of court charges. Prosecutors have complained throughout the trial of Mr. Haradinaj, who faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, that a climate of
intimidation has led to many witnesses refusing to testify. They expect to wrap up their case-in-chief within the next few days. Mr. Selca was indicted for contempt of court for having failed to appear,
without just cause, before the Tribunal on 21 June this year. Another witness, Shefqet Kabashi, was charged after refusing to testify while taking the oath before his testimony on 5 June.The indictment against him accuses Mr. Haradinaj of participating in a joint criminal enterprise with two others, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj, between March and September 1998 aimed at consolidating KLA control in the Dukagjin area by attacking, persecuting and forcibly removing Serb civilians and
violently suppressing "any real or perceived form of collaboration with the Serbs by Albanian or Roma civilians."

While they may not have physically committed every crime for which they are charged, the indictment states, they are still considered criminally responsible for planning, instigating, ordering or aiding and abetting their commission.