Letter to Foreign Minister of Croatia

 

50 BARAUD ROAD SCARSDALE,
N.Y. 10583, (914) 472-6872
HON. JOSEPH J. DI0GUARDI MEMBER OF CONGRESS 1985-1989
717 2ND STREET, NE, STE 303, WASHINGTON. D.C. 20002 (202) 547-3637

Your Excellency,

Thank you for the invitation to visit Zagreb, the capital of the sovereign Republic of Croatia, and for offering an opportunity to exchange our points of views on areas of common interest.

As a Loner U. S. Congressman of Albanian extraction, and the President of the Albanian American Civic League,. I am deeply involved in the efforts to bring freedom to Albanians all over the world and to secure for them a decent life within the family of the civilized world.

This is not an easy task! In Albania, people are now going through the traumatic experience of transition from a repressive communist government to a new democratic Albania. Albanians in Yugoslavia are being persecuted and their basic human rights violated. Further, their national rights as a large and compact national group within Yugoslavia are being capaciously and arbitrarily denied, especially by the government of Serbia.

The mistaken perception that the Albanians? problems are the problems of the Republics in which they live is wrong in theory and unacceptable in practice. Albanians, as all other citizens of Yugoslavia, are human beings entitled to some basic inalienable rights, among them the right to life and liberty.

The right of the Albanian nation presently living in Yugoslavia, nearly three million large, cannot be ignored! We believe that the will freely expressed by the representatives of Kosova on July 2, 1990, for a free, independent, and equal status of Kosova within the Yugoslav federation/confederation, and the subsequent Constitution of the Republic of Kosova, voted unanimously by the legitimate Assembly of Kosova are two basic documents valid on both moral and legal grounds.

It is our belier that the present crisis now paralyzing Yugoslavia cannot be resolved through political compromises reached in mini— Munich?s, behind closed doors and serving only the political interests of the day. There will never be a just and permanent solution of the problems of Yugoslavia if the voices of three million Albanians are not heard, i their will is not counted and they are denied participation in the structuring of a new and democratic Yugoslavia.

For these reasons, we are appalled at the sudden new course that the policies of the Republic of Croatia seems to have taken lately. The statements of Mr. Tudjman and Mr. Mesic, qualifying the problem of Kusova as an internal problem of Serbia is an injurious and unjust act that Albanians will never condone or forget.

The friendship between the seven million Albanians in the Balkans and the four and half million Croatians has strong and convincing reasons to grow and become a major element in their respective national policies. It is for this reason that we have wholeheartedly contributed to the advancement of our mutually beneficial relationship, and will continue to do so. We regret to declare tLxe present course of Croatian policy is detrimental to the interests of the Albanians and, therefore, it makes it impossible for me to entertain the notion that our relations can be advanced under the present circumstances. I have therefore decided to dscline your invitation for the present time6 I hope that Croations, long time friends of the Albanian people, will join with us in a common effort for the security and wellebeing of our two great nations.

sincerely,

Hon. Joseph J. DioGuardi, President
Albanian American Civic League

Dr. Frame Golem
Minister of Foreing Affairs
Republic of Croatia