Mustafa: There will be peace between Kosovo and Serbia if Valley is included in agreement

When talking about the final agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, it says peace between them cannot be if the Valley is not included.

In the Coha.net Week interview, Mustafa re-exerts that the use of Albanian-language texts continues to remain a problem for Albanians in the Presevo Valley, Medvedja and Bujanoc, but says they are working on this over and over again.

It's a decade-long problem. We have started a campaign with the internationals on this issue even had a meeting with Minister of Education in Serbia Mladen Sharchevic and Minister of Education in Albania, Besa Sahin. We're committed to a memorandum of understanding with both of these Republics. A solution should be found in the Valley because it is unacceptable for Albanian students there to have no textbooks. The children there are being discriminated against by the majority”, Mustafa said.

In his mandate as head of the KKSHL, Mustafa has vowed to fulfil his promise of providing texts in Albanian.

And my campaigns have also been educational. Within the memorandum that I mentioned, there will be three topics: Ensure textbooks for elementary and high school, diploma recognition and professional promotion recognition. Finally, we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we also see the dosage of skepticism because it depends only on us. But, by law, Serbia's Ministry of Education is obliged to provide textbooks”, Mustafa said.

The chairman of this council stressed that for secondary schools for Albanian students in the Valley, it is only a textbook, “Gjuha Shqipe and Literature”, and another received books lacking elementary schools.

Mustafa shows that Albanian books will also go to the Valley that directly affect national identity.

“History, geography, music, figurative art, are more sensitive and affecting national identity, but in addition, just as our Council is permitted to respond with competencies as far as 30% of textbooks are concerned, he said.

It has remembered the trends from Kosovo to send books in Albanian to the Presevo Valley, these books that for a long time remained in the Mauna border, and then turned perverse. This says it was within the framework of the proposed agreement in Brussels.

We think Serbia is not ready to develop this agreement in normalisation. And, we have seen the possibility and hope that the Republic of Albania will help this process”, Mustafa said.

But Mustafa says, however, Kosovo and Albania can do more to help Albanians in the Valley. It's also talking about cutting off funds for Albanians in the Valley, and even though there have been demands for tafunskionized this fund, there has been no response from any government.

The new government, from the beginning when the gathering of two governments of the Republic of Albania and the Republic of Kosovo was held in Pec, has sent a joint letter with which we requested that funds be run for the Presevo Valley. That fund was founded at the first meeting of two governments in Prizren. Since 100 thousand euros have been poured out on the issue of maternity power in Presevo, the fund has disappeared. We've been looking for them and constantly looking for them to reshape, but to this day, we have received answers from any government”, Mustafa said.

It is crude, Mustafa says, for the Republic of Albania and Kosovo to have sensitivity for Albanians in the Presevo Valley.

“on several occasions even from Kosovo are financed with 30-40 thousand euros of renovation of a school, and other things, but I consider these are very small projects. The governments of the two countries should have a strategic approach for Albanians in the Valley. We do not demand the level Serbia has for Serbs in Kosovo from 300 million to 400 million are pouring money to Serbs in Kosovo, yet Albania has constitutional duty and Kosovo, and the moral obligation to care for the position of Albanians in Valley”, Mustafa said.

In the end, Mustafa spoke of the possibility of the Valley joining Kosovo.

“The best solution for Albanians in the Valley would be joining Kosovo. In an agreement with Kosovo and Serbia, the Valley must be included. The Valley case is an undeniable fact. Albanians in the Valley are seen as a foreign and hostile element of the state. Any solution that comes to the end, which does not affect the Valley issue, would not create peace between Kosovo and Serbia”, Mustafa said.