Supervised and funded by UNESCO, the conference is held under the auspices of President Moisiu

Hany Saleh, IOL Correspondent

TIRANA, December 9 (IslamOnline.net) – With the participation of six heads of state and at least 100 members of the Balkans intelligentsia, the Albanian capital Tirana hosts on Thursday, December 9, a two-day UN-sponsored conference on religious tolerance.

Supervised and funded by the UNESCO, the conference is being held under the auspices of Albanian Alfred Moisiu.

The conference aims to prove that religion and multi-ethnicity can, through dialogue, contribute to the stability and development of the Balkans, organizers told IslamOnlinwe.net.

High on the agenda is inter-religious and inter-ethnic dialogue in the Balkans, the scene of several unrests and crises over the past decade.

Participants will also discuss the development of the region and moving from the battlefields to production and prosperity.

The international conference will see the participation of the presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia as well as representatives of several international and regional organizations in southeastern Europe.

More than 100 politicians, religious leaders, experts, university professors, intellectuals and journalists from several European states, US, Turkey, Israel and Argentine will also show up.

Good Example

Mohamed Qablany, an advisor to the Albanian president, told the Korrieri newspaper on December 5 that centuries-old religious tolerance among the country’s Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics makes it an example to be copied.

Though Muslims make up a majority of 75 percent of Albania’s 3.2 million population, the country’s president is a Catholic and its prime minister is an Orthodox.

The number of churches in the country also outnumber that of mosques.

There are now some 270 mosques in Albania out of 1667 established before the Communism era.

Albania is the only communist country where religion was completely banned and which was proclaimed “atheistic” by the 1976 constitution.

In 1967, the regime outlawed all religious ritual which led to the demolition of most mosques in the European country.

Qablany slammed politicians who drew national-driven conflicts in religious lights causing unrests in the region.

He said that after the defeat of communism, several national ideologies surfaced, citing Yugoslavia and the war unleashed by Serbia against its neighbors as cases in point.

Since the early 1990s, the Balkans witnessed sectarian disturbances starting with the downfall of Yugoslavia in 1992 and its division into Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia.

The Kosovo crisis also cast shadows over the Balkans region.

Ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90% of the population, opt for complete independence from Serbia while ethnic Serbs and the government in Belgrade insist that the territory is an inalienable part of the former Yugoslav republic.

Kosovo remains technically a province of Serbia although it has been a UN protectorate since NATO intervention.