By ARYEH DEAN COHEN
TIRANA, Albania (April 9) – Albanian President Rexhap Mejdani yesterday thanked the Israeli people for donating aid for refugees from Kosovo, saying the effort is important “because it is a gift from people to people.”
Speaking to a Jewish Agency delegation in his palace in Albania’s capital, Mejdani said: “I think all human beings have to contribute, because this conflict is a conflict between barbarism, genocide, and deportation on one side, and a new order of brotherhood and peace in the Balkans on the other.”
The meeting followed the arrival in Kosovo yesterday of an Israeli airlift bearing 17 tons of emergency supplies. Fifteen tents, hundreds of pacifiers and baby bottles, five tons of Materna baby formula, sleeping bags, and mattresses were among the items hauled off the Bulgarian-registered turboprop that landed here, the second relief flight organized by the Jewish Agency in coordination with Keren Hayesod.
Similar flights are to depart today and next week, part of an ongoing airlift fueled by a campaign in Israel that Haim Chesler, co-chairman of the agency’s immigration and absorption committee, said had witnessed “the kind of identification unseen since the Six Day War.”
“My whole family, all my grandparents, aunts, and uncles… were murdered at Treblinka,” Chesler said. “I feel I represent tens of thousands of Israelis like myself, who have the same ethical background, who believe this is the most elementary thing: to help anyone we can.”
The plane bore a message on its side reading, “From the people of Israel to the people of Kosovo,” alongside an Israeli flag, and was crammed with items specifically requested by those working with the refugees. “The tents are very important, so are the mattresses,” Chesler said, as he and a group of half a dozen agency workers on the Ben-Gurion Airport tarmac prepared the plane for its mission.
Chesler expressed his satisfaction that “the Israeli people has put humanitarian concerns first” and “opened their hearts to the refugees.”
On arrival here, most of the equipment was due to be placed on trucks obtained by the agency in recent days, to be taken to the camps. The rest remained here for use by thousands of other refu=1Fgees encamped at a refugee tent city in the capital. Agency officials working with the refugees in Albania said some of the camps brought back memories of concentration camp barracks.
Chesler told Mejdani the aid was coming not just from the Israeli government, but from average people “contributing out of their own pockets.”
After expressing his nation’s gratitude, Mejdani emphasized the need to continue to establish “human links” between the Israel and Albania, and recalled being told by his own parents of how the Jews were protected in Albania during World War II.
Asked by Chesler and Israeli Ambassador to Italy and Albania Yehuda Millo for a message to those gathered at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square for last night’s rally in support of the refugees, Mejdani said, “My appeal is simple: Help the Albanians help the Albanian people.”
Asked if his government believes Kosovo should be an independent state, he responded: “I think its quite important for the genocide and ethnic cleansing to be stopped, and all the these deported Albanians to be back [home], but under the protection of an international force led by NATO.
“And I think a kind of protectorate of NATO needs to be created there, and these people definitely have to decide their future, based on the international convention, in the spirit of justice, democracy, and freedom.”
Mejdani dismissed as “speculation” concerns raised by Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon regarding the possibility an independent Kosovo would become a seat of Moslem fundamentalism.
https://reliefweb.int/report/albania/albania-israeli-airlifts-creating-human-links
