Albania was really the only place where Bush got any affection; to such an extent that the reception in Bulgaria where several thousand people awaited him waving little American flags seemed cool to him.

Bush’s support for Albania's immediate entry into NATO and his decision to demand independence for the province of Kosovo made quite a few Albanians a bit crazy.

     Newspapers and other media report that some of them, when questioned individually, answered:

     “Bush is a symbol of democracy.  The United States is a protector of peoples' freedom."

     Thousands of unarmed Albanian soldiers and policemen, because that was what the Yankee authorities demanded, stood guard in two columns along more than 20 kilometers stretching between the airport and the capital.

     The thorny problem of the independence of one part of Serbia is very controversial in Europe, and a precedent that could be followed in several countries by other regions claiming sovereignty within current borders.

     And so Albania went over from the extreme left to the extreme right.

     To live to see it!  Seeing is believing!

     Serbia receives a hard blow not only political but also economic.  Kosovo possesses 70 percent of Serbia’s energy reserves.  Between 1928 and 1999, the year of the NATO war against Serbia, the province contributed 70 percent of the zinc and silver.  It is estimated to have 82 percent of its possible reserves of these metals. It also has the largest reserves of bauxite, nickel and cobalt.

     Serbia loses factories, lands and properties, and is left only with the duty to pay for the foreign debt incurred for investments in Kosovo prior to 1998.

     I have just received a news dispatch from AFP that forces me to extend myself for a few more lines.  It literally reads:

     “Moscow, June 13, 2007.

     “Russia accuses the West of holding secret talks for the independence of Kosovo.

     “Russia reproached the Western nations on Wednesday for working secretly and in ‘unilaterally’ to prepare Kosovo’s independence, according to a communiqué released by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Relations.

     “The ‘secret discussions lead us to suspect that a scenario for Kosovo’s sovereignty is being unilaterally prepared', indicated the Ministry’s spokesman, Mikhail Kamynin, in reference to the meeting that the Western powers held in Paris on Tuesday, in the absence of the Moscow government.

     “This attitude, he continued, is ‘intolerable’; moreover, ‘Russia was not invited to the meeting, and this is incompatible with declarations in the sense of seeking accommodating solutions’, he added.”

Fidel Castro Ruz

June 13, 2007

8:12 p.m.