This cultural program, that commenced on February 24, 2018, was carried out in the conference room of the “ALSAR” Foundation involving the participation of the students from the education department. This was a wide-ranging cultural activity that attracted the attention and interest of the students, aiming at their orientation towards challenges faced nowadays by our society, at encouraging and cultivating critical thinking, talks and teamwork as the best mechanisms to gain cultural and professional skills of increasing intellectual potential and social involvement. The program “Meeting with personalities” developed according to a scheduled calendar including different lectures delivered and dealt with by professors, researchers, and prominent personalities of different fields.
1. THE FIRST MEETING
In this meeting, we were honored by the presence of the Head of the Germany-based Humanitarian Aid Organization “HASENE”, Mr. Edin Salkoviç, who delivered a speech titled “Alija Izetbegoviç, an inexhaustible source of inspiration”.
In his speech, he shed light upon the sophisticated personality of Alija Izetbegoviç, as one of the intellectuals and most eminent and successful politicians in Bosnia and in the Balkan region, especially in the last two decades of the twentieth century (1983-2003).
Among other things, he highlighted that Alija is renowned for his book “Islam between East and West”, referred to as the best book of the 80s. Izetbegoviç has written many other books, as he was characterized by rare perception and observation skills and possessed a creative nature from which he radiated serenity and inner peace, understanding for the man and the world surrounding him, as well as intellectual and political courage to name things accordingly.
Alija Izetbegovic is greatly respected from the Western world for his national pride and for not hiding his Islamic identity and is also respected by the Muslim world as an outstanding ideologist and great writer. He will remain an eminent and influential personality, probably the most distinguished Islamic personality of the last century, or as the philosopher Henry Bernard Levy described him: “The man who entered into history against his will.” These were the messages conveyed through his speech, which was heard with attention and keen interest by the participant students.
2. THE SECOND MEETING
The career diplomat and researcher of international relations, “Grand Master in diplomacy” Mr. Shaban Murati, was the next guest of the cultural program “Meeting with personalities”, during which he delivered his speech titled, “The inexistent sea issue: A Greek or Albanian diplomatic intrigue?”, through which he made an exhaustive analysis of the dynamics of the so-called the sea issue between Albania and Greece, by presenting and dealing with a number of archived documents, which helped in fathoming the genesis and the evolution of the sea issue up to today.
Among other things, in his speech, he addressed the interesting and enigmatic issue of how the Albanian diplomacy shifted the topic of discussions from talks on the continental shelf to talks on the delimitation of maritime boundaries.
In his argument, he cast light upon the importance of the historic decision of the Constitutional Court of Albania, which defines the fixed strategic boundaries as the existence of maritime borders, and also on the illegitimacy of any negotiation on maritime borders and on the unfounded cases submitted to the international courts.
In order for the participants to fully understand the sea issue and its perspective, Mr. Shaban Murati referred to a wide range of the open and unresolved problems in the bilateral relations, starting from the Cham issue to the disputes over Vjosa River.
In conclusion, Mr. Murati provided answers to several questions raised by the participant students from “ALSAR” Foundation, regarding the relationships between the two countries from a geographical and diplomatic perspective. Students that participated in the meeting paid attention and showed interest in it.
