NATO Europe Supreme Commander convinced Albania soon an alliance member

TIRANA, Oct 15 – Gen. John Craddock, Supreme Allied commander for Europe, held a visit to Tirana to meet with all senior officials and express his conviction that Albania would be a new NATO member next year.
Albania got the membership invitation at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April and also signed the membership protocol in July. The protocol as to be ratified by all 26 NATO member countries before it may get the full membership. likely next year at its summit also in April that will celebrate NATO’s 60th anniversary.
Gen. Craddock met with Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Defense Minister Gazmend Oketa and other senior officials.
Berisha also thanked the U.S. general for Washington’s support in the country’s reforms and integration efforts into the alliance.
Albania has 428 troops in small army units in international missions in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. It also soon aims at turning the whole army into a professional one.
Gen. Craddock expressed his conviction that Albania would get the full NATO membership at its next summit, also highly evaluating the tiny Balkan country’s moderate policy in the region.
In his meeting with Oketa the general also talked on Albania’s excess ammunition. The March 15 blast in the Gerdec private ammunition disposal factory killed 26 and injured 300 persons.
Albania has some 90,000 tons of excess ammunition remaining from the former communist regime and produced in the 1950s and 1960s in Russia and China.
The government has pledged to dispose all of them in the near future, this time only at the two disposal plants it operates itself.