Profile: Foreign Research and Press Service

The Foreign Research and Press Service at Balliol College, Oxford, publishes a memo, “The Albanian-Yugoslav Frontier,” suggesting where Albania’s postwar borders should be. They contrast national unification with what scholar Paulin Kola will later call “economic and political pragmatism.” Some examples of this contrast include using mountains as borders, even where they divide the same ethnicity, usually Albanians. They suggest giving Albania the northewestern city of Shkodra, but splitting Shkodra Lake with Yugoslavia, giving it the town of Ulquin. They suggest giving the Dukagjin Plateau, which Serbs call Metohija, to Yugoslavia, cutting Albania off from important commercial linkages. For regional stability, they suggest splitting Albania between Yugoslavia and Greece, since all Albanians could not be united in one country. They suggest an alternative, if that violation of “the principle of morality for which Great Britain has long stood” and the violation of Articles 2 and 3 of the new Atlantic Charter was too much: Albania could be made a protectorate of a country like Denmark or part of a regional federation. [Kola, 2003, pp. 14]