Albanians rejoin Serb fold

The Serbian government has signed a deal with the Albanians of Kosovo that promises to restore their access to the official university in the province.

Albanophone education from kindergarten up to university level has, for the past five years, been conducted in alternative, makeshift premises, often harassed by the Serbian administration and police.

But the Kosovar Albanians are having second thoughts.

The agreement, signed between Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, sets no date on when the Albanians will be admitted.

But at a press conference, reported in the Belgrade Dnevni Telegraf on September 12, Serbian education minister Dragoslav Mladenovic said that the agreement is to be implemented over two years and that it would start with kindergartens and work upwards.

The agreement was mediated by the Community of Saint Egidio, an Italian lay community.

It says that "because of its social and humanitarian value" it lies outside the framework of the political debate.

The "normalisation" of education in Kosovo will, it says, allow young people to "approach seriously their education and culture, in order to become responsible citizens, which will be a victory for civilisation, not the victory of one side over another".

The exclusion of the Albanians from schools came after the imposition of direct rule from Belgrade in 1990, after which the Serbs wanted to introduce their own syllabus which would have meant, for example, history being taught from a Serbo-centric viewpoint and Kosovo's own culture being replaced by the traditions of Serbia.

When the Albanian teachers refused to make the change, they were suspended or dismissed and established their own alternative schools.

At the University of Kosovo in Pristina there was a further confrontation when the Serbs sought to impose a policy of ethnic parity in admissions - one Serb to one Albanian - even though Kosovo is 90 per cent Albanian. When the Albanian staff refused to accept the quotas, they too were thrown out and the university was completely "Serbianised".

The Albanian University of Kosovo was set up as a parallel entity whose degrees, unrecognised by the Serbs, are widely accepted and validated abroad.

Its rector, Ejup Statovci, is highly sceptical of the new agreement: "The Serbs are doing this for political reasons to get the sanctions taken off and to make a good impression before their elections in November."

The agreement is worded in the broadest terms. It envisages a working group of three Serbs and three Albanians to be in charge of its implementation but says nothing about the issues which led to the conflict - the Serbian syllabus or ethnic quotas at the university.

"We are simply waiting to see what is going on," Dr Statovci said.

As far as the Albanian University of Kosovo is concerned, Dr Statovci is emphatic that there will be no return to the old system.

His university's exclusion from its former campus, the "independent government of Kosovo", unrecognised by the Serbs, has introduced its own higher education "law".

The "law" dating from 1994, was drawn up "on the European model", embodying the latest legal thinking on higher education and giving the university full autonomy.

"We have begun to transform our university according to that model and we intend to continue on that path," Dr Statovci said.