Centre defuses ethnic hotspots

Denmark and Germany have launched a unique inter-disciplinary research institute aimed at solving ethnic conflicts in Europe.

The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), based in Flensburg, Germany, near the border with Denmark, wants to act as an early warning system to help defuse potential troublespots between ethnic groups in European states, said founding director Stefan Troebst.

As well as conducting field research, funding and publishing research, the ECMI will host conflict workshops providing opposing parties with a platform to discuss their differences. It will differ from other research centres on European ethnic minorities because rather than concentrating on particular regions, it will bring together problem-oriented research and construct a databank of information on the ethnic structure of greater Europe, including the Arctic, the Russian Federation, the CIS and the Black Sea region.

Its first project next year will be a summer course in Denmark bringing together young people from the majority ethnic group of Macedonia and the region's ethnic Albanian minority. In the summer it will host a conflict workshop with representatives from the government in Moldova, the separatist Transdniester region and the autonomous area of Gagausia.

Field research is first to concentrate on Kosovo, "a black hole without international observers, which we believe to be the most critical ethnic crisis point in Europe at the moment," said Dr Troebst, a specialist in contemporary European history who has recently worked for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Macedonia and Moldova.

The ECMI has received 570,000 Ecus (Pounds 438,000) funding for the first three years - 50 per cent from Copenhagen, per cent from Bonn and 23 per cent from the state of Schleswig-Holstein. It will have a Danish chairman and will operate in English. It has also applied for funding from the European Union.

The idea for the academic centre originated from politicians who saw that, following the revolutionary changes in Europe from the Balkans to the former Soviet Union and the explosion of nationalist clashes in these states, the solutions to the problems of dealing with minorities have become a central European issue.

The German politician Marianne Tidick, now a member of the ECMI board, said the centre would give "opposing parties among ethnic minority and majority groups the chance to sit round the table together in a way which would not be possible at home". The ECMI is still looking for two senior analysts, three research associates and an electronic services librarian.