Will the real Tony Blair please stand up?
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair traveled to Kosovo on Monday to mark 25 years since the end of the country’s war with Serbia and received a warm welcome from President Vjosa Osmani, a gaggle of children waving British flags … and five men named Tonibler.
That’s not a typo. The name originated in Kosovo in Blair’s honor because of the role he played in the country’s liberation.
Blair, who as British PM helped organize an international coalition to launch airstrikes in a bid to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević to end his military campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army, today enjoys hero status in Pristina. A statue of the former British leader is set to be unveiled on Wednesday and placed on Blair Boulevard in the city of Ferizaj.
It’s not the first time Blair has encountered his namesakes. In 2010, during a visit to the country’s capital, he met nine boys named in his honour and was told his name was “quite common” in Kosovo.
At a special session of parliament scheduled for his arrival, Blair told MPs that he did not regret his advocacy for Kosovo.
“Meeting the Kosovo refugees at the camps near Skopje, hearing their heartbreaking stories of displacement and cruelty, of their faces desperate for help, seeking in my face some sense of whether I would or could help. We did help and I never regretted it,” he said.
Blair isn’t the only world leader from the 1990s held in high esteem in Kosovo. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has a thoroughfare named after him in Pristina as well as an 11-foot-tall statue, while former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has a monument of her own. Clinton and Madeleine are also reportedly common postwar names.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema were also in Kosovo this week to mark the anniversary of the country’s liberation.
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