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TIRANA, Albania, Sept. 5 (UPI) Ethnic Albanians in Montenegro want a separate education system for all Albanians in the Balkans, says an Albanian ethnic leader in Montenegro.
"Our party asks that the education programs for ethnic Albanians in Montenegro to be unified for the all Albanians in the Balkans," Fuad Nimani, leader of the Albanian Democratic Union, told the BBC Saturday.
Nimani's party is a member of coalition government in Montenegro and supports Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic in his attempts to separate the small republic from the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Nimani wants to have close cooperation with Albania and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia. In early July, Nimani was received by Albanian government leaders, who are pushing him to expand the role of ethnic Albanians in the government and institutions of Macedonia _ already tense from the effects of years of racial tension and the ethnic-Albanian refugee crisis caused by NATO's war against Yugoslavia.
In August, Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko ordered his minister of education, Et'hem Ruka, to prepare a unique Albanian national education program for all ethnic Albanians in the Balkans. Such a program has not been endorsed nor encouraged by neighboring Balkan nations.
"This national education program has to be unified with the mother country and to be available for Albanians in Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro, too," Nimani said.
Majko's scheme for a Balkan-wide Albanian education program was accepted by Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci, whose soldiers have seized control of much of Kosovo despite the presence of NATO peacekeeping troops and the faltering U.N. efforts to keep Kosovo a multi-ethnic province of Yugoslavia.
"The unification of our national education system and culture is a general desire in Kosovo, but it's not in our hands because Kosovo is not yet an independent country," Hajrullah Koliqi, the self-proclaimed deputy minister of education in Kosovo, told United Press International last week during his visit to Tirana.
The Macedonian government opposes the Albanian national education program, considering it another step in the ethnic Albanian plot to create a "Greater Albania" from large chunks of Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, the whole of Albania and even parts of northern Greece with Albanian minorities.