BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
ATHENS, Greece - In a concession to a wave of popular mobilizations for self-determination of Albanians in Kosovo, Belgrade signed an agreement with leaders of the Democratic League of Kosovo on March 23 that would allow the return of Albanian teachers and students to state high schools and university system in Kosovo.

"If such an agreement were to be implemented, we would be able to reclaim our buildings, including the university library I have never seen," said Fitore Sheciri, 24, in a March 13 interview in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. Sheciri has been attending classes at the parallel University of Pristina, as have 23,000 other Albanian students. This illegal institution, along with high schools for 60,000 students, was set up by Albanians in homes and mosques, after Belgrade banned high school and college instruction in the Albanian language in 1991.

The Independent Students Union (UPS), one of the main organizations sponsoring mass protests in Kosovo demanding national rights for Albanians, had not issued a statement on the accord as of press time. "We are having a student assembly tomorrow where we will review the text of the accord and express our opinion," said Lulezon Jagxhiu, 22, a leader of the Independent Students Union, in a telephone interview from Pristina March 26.

"The proof will be in the pudding. We have reason to be skeptical. [Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevic has made many promises in the past but his regime has never kept its word," Jagxhiu said, referring to a similar agreement on education Belgrade signed in 1996 but never implemented.

In a sign that the Serbian regime may try to derail this accord, pro-Belgrade Serbs have staged large protests in Pristina demanding Albanians accept instruction only in Serbo- Croatian. And on March 24, the day after the education agreement was signed, Serbian police forces and paramilitary units launched another assault on villages in western Kosovo, near the border with Albania, with helicopters and artillery under the guise of fighting "terrorism." At least two Albanians were reported dead.

Washington and other imperialist powers are trying to take advantage of the explosive situation to deepen NATO intervention in the Balkans and tighten their encirclement of Russia. In doing so they are encountering stiffer opposition from Moscow.

At a March 25 meeting in Bonn of foreign ministers of the "Contact Group," U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright pushed for imposing an arms embargo and economic and other sanctions on Yugoslavia. Moscow, which has sold weaponry to Belgrade, opposed such measures. The Contact Group is made up of the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia and is charged with monitoring implementation of the Dayton accord. That was the treaty Washington forced the warring regimes in the formerly federated Yugoslavia to sign in 1995, paving the way for the partition of Bosnia and its occupation by NATO troops.

While failing to get backing for imposing new sanctions at the Bonn meeting, Washington did get a promise from the Russian government that Moscow would support a resolution for an arms embargo on Belgrade, which may be voted on by the United Nations Security Council March 31.

"I do not need to tell you that in the view of the United States, given Belgrade's recent actions, we would be justified in imposing even tougher sanctions," Albright stated at a news conference after the meeting. "We are moving gradually but unmistakably forward in the direction of greater pressure on Belgrade."

Popular mobilizations continue
Meanwhile, Albanians in Kosovo have continued their mass mobilizations demanding an end to the brutal repression by Belgrade and independence from Serbia. These actions include:

A demonstration of more than 40,000 in Pristina March 18, organized by the Youth Forum of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), and smaller actions throughout Kosovo that day;

A rally of 50,000 people in downtown Pristina March 19 organized by the Independent Students Union, followed by a "ringing protest" - with alarm clocks, bells, and beating on pots and pans to symbolize that time is up for the Serbian regime to begin negotiations for independence;

An outpouring of 30,000 in the town of Pec March 19 for the funeral procession of Qerim Muriqi, 52, who was shot dead by a Serbian paramilitary unit on his way to the LDK Youth Forum-sponsored protest in town the previous day;

A rally of 15,000 in the Dragodan neighborhood of Pristina, mostly women, called by the Kosovo Women's Network and the Women's Forum of the LDK.

"Independence for Kosovo, a peaceful divorce from Serbia, is the only solution to guarantee lasting peace and stability in the region," said Edi Shukriu of the LDK Women's Forum at the March 25 women's rally in Pristina, according to the Kosovo Information Center.

"Serb police, out of Kosovo!" and "Drenica: we stand with you," were among the placards protesters held, along with photos of those killed in police sweeps since the end of February. Drenica is a mountainous region of 50 villages near Pristina where Serbian police forces waged assaults with heavy weaponry on February 28 and March 5, killing 85 people.

Echoing calls for military intervention by imperialist powers advanced by LDK leader Ibrahim Rugova and other pro- capitalist forces among Albanians, a handful of women carried signs saying, "NATO, help us." As Militant reporters found out during a visit to Kosovo March 11-15, many other working people and youth are opposed to or are at least skeptical of such views. "The U.S. and NATO have never been the friends of the Albanian people or anybody else fighting against national oppression," Jacup Zeneli said at a March 13 protest of 100,000 in Pristina. "We rely on ourselves to fight. We will find out who our friends are."

Rugova was re-elected president of the Independent Republic of Kosovo in a largely symbolic March 22 ballot, where Albanians also voted for a parliament. Similar elections had taken place in 1992, where Rugova was first elected to the post and set up a parallel government to the one loyal to Belgrade. Kosovo - whose population of 2.1 million is 90 percent Albanian - had been declared an independent republic two years earlier by Albanian members of the region's parliament. As in the past, Belgrade denounced the elections as illegal. Serbian police have never allowed the Albanian parliament to convene a meeting.

Rugova, a literary critic who had been a member of the former governing Communist Party in Yugoslavia, was the only candidate for president of Kosovo. The Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), a guerrilla group that has been waging an armed struggle for independence for several years, issued a statement calling for a boycott of the elections "due to the exceptional circumstances... and the state of war in Drenica."

In the latest assault on March 24, Serbian police descended on the village of Gllogjan in the Drecan region of Kosovo near the border with Albania with helicopters and artillery, as well as three other nearby villages. By the end of the day, Gllogjan had been abandoned and 300 Albanian refugees had reached another town in the region. Claiming they were responding to a "terrorist" killing of a Serb cop, Belgrade's special forces shelled and burned several houses. Authorities said subsequently that one Serb policeman and two Albanians were killed in the raid. Other reports have put the death toll at more than four Albanians. The Kosovo Information Center reported that at least 11 Albanians had been arrested by the police in that area.

In an attempt to show popular support for its policies and capture some of the moral high ground that fighting Albanians have clearly won over the last month, Belgrade has promoted a number of demonstrations by chauvinist Serbs in Pristina. The first such action of 2,000 took place March 18.

Protests by chauvinist Serbs
The second, and reportedly the largest, took place the next day to counter the "ringing protest" by the Independent Students Union. The Financial Times of London estimated it at 50,000. "That is definitely an exaggeration," said Lulezon Jagxhiu, in the March 26 telephone interview. "The press around the world has also failed to report accurately that this was consciously organized by the government in Belgrade. Students and others were bussed in from Nis and other cities in Serbia, as well as from Kosovo, to give the impression of massive support for Belgrade."

Jagxhiu also reported that a number of Serbs tried to provoke Albanians protesters into a physical fight by driving a car into crowds of Albanians that day, injuring several people. "One of their aims with their counter protests is to provoke us into fist fights to justify further repressive measures," the student leader said.

Another sizable protest by chauvinist Serbs of about 30,000 took place March 23 to denounce the signing of the education agreement. Under this accord, Albanian students will reportedly return to state institutions in phases by June 30. The two sides did not agree on a joint teaching program, so Albanians and Serbs will be taught in separate shifts in their own languages with different curricula. Serb students denounced the accord as a "betrayal" of the Serbs in Kosovo and demanded Albanians be taught only in Serbo- Croatian. Radivoje Papovic, the university's dean, notorious for his extreme Serbian nationalism, said, "The Albanians should understand that they have to live with us. We don't have to live with them."

Jagxhiu drew a parallel between these reactionary demonstrations and the counterprotests organized by Belgrade in early 1997 in the middle of daily demonstrations that forced the Milosevic regime to withdraw cancellation of election results in November 1996. During that ballot, the now defunct opposition coalition Zajedno won majorities in municipal elections in 15 of Serbia's 19 largest cities. "The Milosevic regime didn't succeed in derailing the protests for democratic rights by hundreds of thousands of students and other people in Serbia then," Jagxhiu said. "It's unlikely they'll succeed in stopping the popular demonstrations by Albanians in Kosovo now."

Most Serbs in Kosovo, who have privileges in housing and jobs that are denied to the Albanian population, support Belgrade. But a few have joined protests by Albanians there. And a number of students from the University of Belgrade and elsewhere have traveled to Pristina to join actions showing their support for the struggle for self-determination.

It is these fighting Albanian workers and youth, and their potential to forge alliances in struggle with fellow working people elsewhere in Yugoslavia, who are the biggest obstacle to the designs of Washington and other capitalist powers to restore capitalist social relations in Yugoslavia and tighten the imperialist encirclement of the workers state in Russia.

"American diplomacy seems to be imbued with the fear that the Kosovo crisis will evolve into a `Balkan intifada'," said an article in the March 22 Vima, one of the main dailies published in Athens, Greece. Intifada is the term describing the rebellion by Palestinians inside the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s against Zionist rule and for a homeland. The article pointed to the insistence by Washington and other imperialist powers to oppose independence for Kosovo as they back calls by Rugova for sanctions against Serbia and for possible expansion of NATO intervention into the region.

Washington maintains 8,000 troops leading a 30,000-strong NATO occupation force in Bosnia. It has made clear recently it intends to keep U.S. troops in Macedonia even if a United Nations "peacekeeping force" of 1,000 is ended. During a recent visit to the Balkans, U.S. undersecretary of state Strobe Talbott also unveiled an "action plan for southeast Europe" that includes the creation of a NATO rapid deployment force that would be based in Macedonia. Romania, Slovenia, and Bulgaria are likely candidates as well. The purpose is to create a "security ring" around Yugoslavia.

Within NATO there are tactical differences on strategy in the Balkans between Washington and Paris and Bonn. Within the Contact Group, only London supports fully the U.S. proposals for an arms embargo and new economic sanctions on Yugoslavia. During a March 19 joint visit to Belgrade by the foreign ministers of France and Germany, the two government officials said they were satisfied with concessions Milosevic offered and would not push for new sanctions immediately. "The demands we made have, generally speaking, been met," said German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel.

Washington's designs on the Balkans, along with NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe, have sparked growing opposition from Moscow. Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov had campaigned against the arms embargo on Yugoslavia prior to the Bonn meeting of the Contact Group, even though he half- heartedly promised at the end to support such a resolution at the United Nations. The Contact Group agreed to meet within four weeks to reconsider punitive measures against Belgrade.  
 
 
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